Jakarta Struts Cookbook

12.5. Creating Localized Messages from an Action

Problem

You need to create a localized message from within an Action.

Solution

MessageResources resources = getResources(request);
Locale locale = getLocale(request);
String msg1 = resources.getMessage(locale, "message.success"));
String msg2 = resources.getMessage(locale, "msg.hello", "Bill"));

Discussion

Application messages for information and errors are typically created using the ActionMessage and ActionError classes. These messages are saved in the request using the saveMessages( ) and saveErrors( ) methods.

Warning

The ActionError class has been deprecated in Struts 1.2. The ActionMessage class should be used instead.

But you can retrieve localized text messages in the Action itself. You may need the message in the Action because you are logging this information or you need to pass the message to some other service. The Solution shows how you can get a localized message in an Action. The MessageResources and current Locale are retrieved using the getResources( ) and getLocale() methods of the base Action class. MessageResources provides a number of variations of the getMessage( ) method. There are three basic pieces of information you can pass:

locale

The requested message Locale or null for the system default Locale

key

The message key to look up

args

An array of replacement parameters for placeholders in the message

You can retrieve messages from an alternate MessageResources set. Suppose you've declared your alternate set in the ...