What is the best approach for grouping resources in a resource bundle file? The one I see most common is to group resources by web page, an example would be:
# -- company page
company.name.lbl=Name:
company.address.lbl=Address:
# -- contact page
contact.name.lbl=Name:
contact.email.lbl=Email:
The problem with this is that a lot of fields with the same name are duplicated. Would you then recommend identifying all the common names and group them separately? Something like:
name.lbl=Name:
address.lbl=Address:
email.lbl=Email:
Of course this also has some drawbacks, if you want to change the company name label to ‘Company Name’ then it is possible you change the contact name label without meaning to. Of course you should create a new resource for this, but it is possible the person making the change might overlook creating a new resource.
I would keep to the former example of grouping by web page, since the text displayed on each page has its own separate context.
You could try to keep things DRY and identify all of the common text, but should the context of any page change, you may find yourself creating new resources that you would have already done if you kept the page resources separate.
Another reason for keeping the resources separated by page is that if you ever need to translate your resources, the context for creating translations will be self-evident. That helps you keep a clean separation of concerns, so your coders will not have to worry about how words might be translated, and your translators will not have to mess with any code.