Using external XML file as list resource bundle in ADF Application

Hello All

In this post I am talking about using external XML file as list resource bundle in ADF Application

Using this approach we need not to hard code component's label and messages , all labels and messages will be read from XML file and no need to open application to change any resource , In short we can update resources without compiling and redeploying application



A resource bundle contains a number of named resources, where the data type of the named resources is String. Resource bundles can be either Java classes, property files, or XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format ) files.

Let's implement this, Created model using Departments table of HR Schema

Right click on viewController project and go to properties , Select Resource Bundle, Change default project bundle name to listresourcebundle.view.bundle.Resource and check Automatically Synchronize Bundle checkbox

Now click on Ok button of Project Properties dialog and click yes on the popup dialog to change bundle name

After changing default resource bundle name , Open faces-config.xml file (Under WEB-INF Folder)

Go to Application tab and add a line in Resource Bundle Section, In Base Name put the whole bundle name and in Var Name use any string that will be further used to fetch resource values 

Create a page in viewController project and drop Departments viewObject as af:table on page and to create Resource Bundle Java class select any column of af:table and Select Text Resource in Header Text property

You can see a Resource.java class in created in viewController project

Now create List Resource XML file in this format

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252" ?>
<bundle>
<label>
 <key>RES.1</key>
 <value>Department Id</value>
</label>
<label>
 <key>RES.2</key>
 <value>Department Name</value>
</label>
<label>
 <key>RES.3</key>
 <value>Manager Id</value>
</label>
<label>
 <key>RES.4</key>
 <value>Location Id</value>
</label>
</bundle>

Saved this file as Resource_En.xml in D drive of my system, Now see the code of Resource.java file to process and read resource values from this XML file
The java.util.ListResourceBundle class manages resources in a name and value array. Each java.util.ListResourceBundle class is contained within a Java class file

package listresourcebundle.view.bundle;

import java.io.File;

import java.util.ListResourceBundle;

import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;

import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;
import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;

public class Resource extends ListResourceBundle {
    
    //Path to XML Resource File
    private String Res_path = "D://Resource_En.xml";
    
    //Initialize an Object Array to hold label and key values
    public Resource() {
        for (int i = 0; i < 5000; i++) {
            contents[i][0] = "";
            contents[i][1] = "";
        }
    }

    private static final Object[][] contents = new Object[5000][2];

    /**Method to process XML file and get key and value of resource and put that in array
     * @return
     */
    public Object[][] getContents() {
        try {

            File file = new File(Res_path);
            DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
            DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
            Document doc = db.parse(file);
            doc.getDocumentElement().normalize();
            NodeList nList = doc.getElementsByTagName("label");

            for (int temp = 0; temp < nList.getLength(); temp++) {
                Node nNode = nList.item(temp);
                if (nNode.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) {

                    Element eElement = (Element) nNode;
                    contents[temp][0] = getTagValue("key", eElement);
                    contents[temp][1] = getTagValue("value", eElement);
                }
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        return contents;
    }

    private static String getTagValue(String sTag, Element eElement) {
        NodeList nlList = eElement.getElementsByTagName(sTag).item(0).getChildNodes();
        Node nValue = nlList.item(0);
        return nValue.getNodeValue();
    }
}

Now configuration part is done and to apply resources in page , Select column and go to header text property and from expression builder select var name from Faces' Resource Bundles and put respective key in single quote like this

Repeat this step for all columns

Now run and check application, All labels are fetched from XML file

Sample ADF Application (Jdeveloper 12.1.3)- Download
Cheers :) Happy Learning