Question

Is it possible to maintain the resource bundle in a folder structure something similar to the following;

 1. us\en
 2. ae\en
 3. ae\ar

The resource bundle file name will be the same but maintained in different folders. I know Java recomends

myresource_en_US.properties

But I need to maintained them in folders and use the resource bundle classes to access. I am using JDK 6. Does anyone know how I can do it?

Answer 1

Yes, you can control the loading with a custom Control. Here’s a kickoff example:

public class FolderControl extends Control {
    public ResourceBundle newBundle
        (String baseName, Locale locale, String format, ClassLoader loader, boolean reload)
            throws IllegalAccessException, InstantiationException, IOException
    {
        String resourceName = "/" + locale.getCountry() + "/" + locale.getLanguage() 
            + "/" baseName + ".properties";
        ResourceBundle bundle = null;
        InputStream stream = null;
        if (reload) {
            URL url = loader.getResource(resourceName);
            if (url != null) {
                URLConnection connection = url.openConnection();
                if (connection != null) {
                    connection.setUseCaches(false);
                    stream = connection.getInputStream();
                }
            }
        } else {
            stream = loader.getResourceAsStream(resourceName);
        }
        if (stream != null) {
            try {
                bundle = new PropertyResourceBundle(new InputStreamReader(stream, "UTF-8"));
            } finally {
                stream.close();
            }
        }
        return bundle;
    }
}

(the source code is copied from the default implementation with only the resourceName changed and the PropertyResourceBundle being changed to read the stream as UTF-8 –no need for native2ascii anymore)

which you use as follows

ResourceBundle bundle = ResourceBundle.getBundle("myresource", new FolderControl());
// ...

See also:

• The Java Tutorials – Customizing ResourceBundle loading