Question

I have a problem with i18n enums in my JSF application. When I started, I had enums with the text defined inside. But now, I have keys tied to message bundles in the enum.

Example one of my enums:

public enum OrderStatus implements CustomEnum {
    PENDING("enum.orderstatus.pending"),
    CANCELED("enum.orderstatus.canceled");

    /**
     * key in message bundle
     */
    private String name;

    OrderStatus(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    @Override
    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

}

In the view layer, I use something like:

<!-- input -->
<h:selectOneMenu value="#{order.status}">
    <f:selectItems value="#{flowUtils.orderStatuses}"/>
</h:selectOneMenu>

<!-- output -->
<h:outputText value="#{order.status}"/>

and in Java:

public class FlowUtils {
    public List<SelectItem> getOrderStatuses() {
        ArrayList<SelectItem> l = new ArrayList<SelectItem>();
        for(OrderStatus c: OrderStatus.values()) {
            // before i18n
            // l.add(new SelectItem(c, c.getName()));

            // after i18n
            l.add(new SelectItem(c, FacesUtil.getMessageValue(c.getName())));
        }
        return l;               
    }
}

public class FacesUtil {
    public static String getMessageValue(String name) {
        FacesContext context = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
        return context.getApplication().getResourceBundle(context, "m").getString(name);
    }
}

It worked well, but when I needed to output #{order.status}, I needed to convert it.
So I implemented a converter, but got in trouble with conversion of String to Object in the getAsObject() method.

web.xml:

<converter>
  <converter-for-class>model.helpers.OrderStatus</converter-for-class>
  <converter-class>model.helpers.EnumTypeConverter</converter-class>
</converter>

Java:

public class EnumTypeConverter implements Converter {

    @Override
    public Object getAsObject(FacesContext context, UIComponent comp,
            String value) throws ConverterException {
        // value = localized value :(
        Class enumType = comp.getValueBinding("value").getType(context);
        return Enum.valueOf(enumType, value);
    }

    @Override
    public String getAsString(FacesContext context, UIComponent component,
            Object object) throws ConverterException {
        if (object == null) {
            return null;
        }
        CustomEnum type = (CustomEnum) object;
        ResourceBundle messages = context.getApplication().getResourceBundle(context, "m");
        String text = messages.getString(type.getName());
        return text;
    }

}

I’m entangled now with that. Anybody know how to internationalize multiple Enums efficiently?

Answer 1

The value which is passed through the converter is not the option label as you seem to expect, but the option value. The best practice is to not do this in the model side, but in the view side, because the model shouldn’t need to be i18n aware.

As to the approach, you’re basically unnecessarily overcomplicating things. Since JSF 1.2 there’s a builtin EnumConverter which will kick in automatically and since JSF 2.0 you can iterate over a generic array or List in f:selectItems by the new var attribute without the need to duplicate the values over a List<SelectItem> in the model.

Here’s how the bean can look like:

public class Bean {
    private OrderStatus orderStatus;
    private OrderStatus[] orderStatuses = OrderStatus.values();

    // ...
}

And here’s how the view can look like (assuming that msg refers to the <var> as you’ve definied in <resource-bundle> in faces-config.xml):

<h:selectOneMenu value="#{bean.orderStatus}">
    <f:selectItems value="#{bean.orderStatuses}" var="orderStatus" 
        itemValue="#{orderStatus}" itemLabel="#{msg[orderStatus.name]}" />
</h:selectOneMenu>

That’s all.

---

Unrelated to the problem, you’ve typos in the enum name and message keys, it should be:

PENDING("enum.orderstatus.pending"),
CANCELLED("enum.orderstatus.cancelled");

And, more clean would be to keep the bundle keys out the enum and use enum itself as part of bundle key. E.g.

PENDING,
CANCELLED;

<h:selectOneMenu value="#{bean.orderStatus}">
    <f:selectItems value="#{bean.orderStatuses}" var="orderStatus" 
        itemValue="#{orderStatus}" itemLabel="#{msg['enum.orderstatus.' += orderStatus]}" />
</h:selectOneMenu>

enum.orderstatus.PENDING = Pending
enum.orderstatus.CANCELLED = Cancelled