Jakarta Struts Cookbook

2.6. Using Multiple Resource Bundles

Problem

You want to break apart your application resources properties file into multiple files for improved organization and easier maintenance, particularly in a team environment.

Solution

Create separate properties files and declare a message-resources element for each file in your struts-config.xml file:

<message-resources
  parameter="com.oreilly.strutsckbk.MessageResources"/>
<message-resources 
  parameter="com.oreilly.strutsckbk.LabelResources"
  key="labels">
</message-resources>
<message-resources 
  parameter="com.oreilly.strutsckbk.HeaderResources"
  key="headers">
</message-resources>

Discussion

Struts uses a concept known as message resources to provide a mechanism for storing error messages, field labels, and other static text. With the default Struts implementation, you store the messages as name/value pairs in a .properties file. A message resources set is basically the same as a Java ResourceBundle.

You make your message resources properties file available to Struts using the message-resources element. The parameter attribute identifies the classpath-relative name of the properties file. You derive the value for this attribute by replacing the path separator in the file's path with a dot (".") and removing the .properties extension from the filename. For example, if the properties file was located in /WEB-INF/classes/com/oreilly/strutsckbk/MessageResources.properties, you would set up the message resources element as follows:

<message-resources ...