An important facet of designing a program for use in different countries is the localization, or externalization, of text that is displayed by the program.

By externalizing strings, the text can be translated for different countries and languages without rebuilding the Java program.

The ResourceBundle Class in Java helps you to accomplish the above task.

Resource bundles contain locale-specific objects. When your program needs a locale-specific resource, a String for example, your program can load it from the resource bundle that is appropriate for the current user’s locale.

In this way, you can write program code that is largely independent of the user’s locale isolating most, if not all, of the locale-specific information in resource bundles.

More information on Java ResourceBundle here.

If your application is not using the Resource Bundle, you can always use the Eclipse “Externalize String” feature to move all the translatable strings into a properties file. In addition, the wizard also creates a helper class to access the resource bundle.

ResourceBundle Editor

Whenever you define a new “key value” data in one properties file, you have to add the same in all the other properties file. The same applies when you delete a key from one of the properties file. This process can get messy if you are modifying lot of files;

ResourceBundle Editor plug-in is a perfect companion to handle the above task with ease.

File Association

ResourceBundle Editor (RBE) is an editor extension for “.properties” file. By default, Eclipse opens the properties file in the Properties File Editor. You can either selectively open the properties file in RBE or set RBE as the default editor.

User Interface

As mentioned earlier, RBE associates itself with a properties file in the Eclipse workspace. RBE is a tabbed editor; There is a “Properties” tab which is the primary tab used to add/modify new/existing key value pairs.

There is a default tab whose view is similar to the default properties editor. In addition to this, each locale specific file is also opened in a tab.

The keys in the tree view are always sorted. You can quickly create a new key and associate values using the local specific text boxes. There are options even to rename a key and also to duplicate a key.

The view of the tree can either be flat or hierarchical. The default view can be controlled via the Preference page.

Also you can quickly create a new Resource bundle using the “New” tab.

Other features

• RBE can also report missing values. This can be identified by the icon status for each key in the tree view.
• Can toggle between flat and hierarchical view of keys.
• Supports Eclipse “nl” structure for I18N of plugins
• Wizard for creating new resource bundle.
• Non-ASCII character conversion to/from Unicode.

Issues

When you try to create a new key in an empty properties file, a NullPointerException is logged in the Error View. In order to avoid this, you should start with a file which has at least one key defined.

I couldn’t find how RBE reports duplicate and similar keys.

Summary

RBE is a must have plug-in if you are dealing with multiple properties file. Even otherwise, its a good alternative to the default Properties Editor.

Additional information about internationalized applications can be found in the following documents:

• http://eclipse.org/articles/Article-Internationalization/how2I18n.html
• http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/i18n/intro/index.html

Download ResourceBundle Editor

One of the notable things in this years Eclipse Release (Europa) is the way the Eclipse packages are released. In previous releases each project(WTP,DTP) had to be separately downloaded and installed.

For e.g. if you wanted a XML editor in Eclipse, you had to download and install the Web Tools Platform (WTP) package. With Europa there are set of 4 well defined packages targeted towards specific segment of developers.

Eclipse IDE for Java Developers

This package consists of the basic IDE with superior Java editing, incremental compilation, code assist etc. Also it includes the XML Editor (from WTP package).

The other packages included are:

• Base Platform
• JDT – Java Development Tooling
• CVS Client
• XML/XSD Editor
• Mylyn – Task Focused UI for Eclipse
• GEF
• EMF

Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers

This package is specially targeted for web developers. Many eclipse users are still not aware of Eclipse WTP project and hence I had encountered in many of the forums, where users complained of not being able to use Eclipse for Web Development.

Eclipse IDE for Java EE includes:

• Base Platform
• JDT
• Eclipse PDE – Plug-in Development Environment
• CVS Client
• Java IDE
• EMF
• GEF
• XML/XSD/HTML and JSP Editor
• Mylyn
• Datatools – Which help you quickly work with different DB’s.

Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers

If you are just interested in doing C/C++ development with Eclipse, you should download this package.

It includes

• Base Platform
• CDT – C/C++ Development Tooling
• CVS Client

Eclipse IDE for RCP/Plug-in Developers

This packages contains a complete set of tools for developers who want to create plug-ins and Rich Client Applications based on Eclipse.

It includes:

• Base Platform
• Eclipse SDK with complete source code
• EMF
• GEF
• Mylyn
• XML/XSD editor

If you do understand the different Eclipse packages, have a look at the official page detailing the different features in each Eclipse distribution.