Jakarta Struts Cookbook

12.2. Sharing Message Resources with JSTL

Problem

You want the JSTL formatting tags (fmt) tags to use the same MessageResources properties file used by Struts.

Solution

Set the value of the JSTL localization context parameter to your Struts MessageResources file, as shown in the partial web.xml file of Example 12-2.

Example 12-2. Setting the JSTL localization context

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE web-app PUBLIC
    "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.3//EN"
    "http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd">
    
<web-app>
    <context-param>      
        <param-name>javax.servlet.jsp.jstl.fmt.localizationContext</param-name>
        <param-value>path.to.MessageResources
        </param-value>
    </context-param>
...

Discussion

The JSP Standard Tag Library (JSTL) provides powerful tags for support of internationalization. The JSTL formatting tag library, referred to as the fmt tags, support many of the same internationalization features provided by the Struts tags and a lot more. You can configure JSTL to use the same MessageResources file you use in your Struts application. The JSTL tags rely on a default resource bundle of properties. You define this default resource bundle for your JSTL tags with a web application context parameter. Set the param-name to javax.servlet.jsp.jstl.fmt.localizationContext and the param-value to the same value as the parameter of the message-resources element in your struts-config.xml file.

If you use an alternate MessageResources file in your Struts applications, you can ...