Question

I would like to be able to retrieve a string from a message bundle from inside a JSF 2 managed bean. This would be done in situations where the string is used as the summary or details parameter in a FacesMessage or as the message in a thrown exception.

I want to make sure that the managed bean loads the correct message bundle for the user’s locale. It is not clear to me how to do this from a managed bean using JSF API calls.

My configuration is:

• Using Tomcat 7 as the container so the solution cannot depend on API calls that only work in a full application server container
• Using the JSF 2 reference implementation (Mojarra)
• NOT using any libraries that allow CDI

NOTE: I did see this similar question, but it depends on features that are unavailable in my configuration

EDIT: I made a mistake in my original question. What I meant to ask was “How can I get a resource bundle string from inside a managed bean”? BalusC gave me the correct answer for what I asked. The solution for what I actually meant to ask is very similar:

public static String getResourceBundleString(
            String resourceBundleName,
            String resourceBundleKey)
        throws MissingResourceException {
    FacesContext facesContext = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
    ResourceBundle bundle = 
        facesContext.getApplication().getResourceBundle(
            facesContext, resourceBundleName);
    return bundle.getString(resourceBundleKey);
}

Also, here is a link to another question that explains the difference between “message” bundles and “resource” bundles.

Answer 1

You can get the full qualified bundle name of <message-bundle> by Application#getMessageBundle(). You can get the current locale by UIViewRoot#getLocale(). You can get a ResourceBundle out of a full qualified bundle
name and the locale by ResourceBundle#getBundle().

So, summarized:

FacesContext facesContext = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
String messageBundleName = facesContext.getApplication().getMessageBundle();
Locale locale = facesContext.getViewRoot().getLocale();
ResourceBundle bundle = ResourceBundle.getBundle(messageBundleName, locale);
// ...

---

Update: as per the mistake in the question, you actually want to get the bundle which is identified by the <base-name> of <resource-bundle>. This is unfortunately not directly available by a standard JSF API. You’ve either to hardcode the same base name in the code and substitute the messageBundleName in the above example with it, or to inject it as a managed property on <var> in a request scoped bean:

@ManagedProperty("#{msg}")
private ResourceBundle bundle; // +setter