• A great utility for localization is Attesoro, which can help you build your resource bundles.

• Eclipse Resource Bundle Editor Plugin: http://sourceforge.net/projects/eclipse-rbe/ is another FANTASTIC editor for eclipse.

• IBM's Resource Bundle Manager which is awesome too.

Below you can see some screenshots of the eclipse resource bundle editor plugin. I really recommend this tool also

INFO Make sure your files are all utf-8 encoding. It's also good i18n practice to liberally use cfprocessingdirective

Now that you have completed the initialization of the i18n settings in the configuration file, you are ready to code for them. There are several methods that are available to all handlers, interceptors, layouts and views that deal with i18n via runtime mixins. You can use these methods directly or go to the services directly if you inject them.

Mapped Models

This module registers the following models in WireBox:

• i18n@cbi18n : Helper with all kinds of methods for localization

• resourceService@cbi18n : Service to interact with language resource bundles

Mixin Helpers

The module registers the following methods for handlers/layouts/views/interceptors:

Bundle Aliases

You can leverage the getResource() or $r() method to retrieve resources from specific bundles by using the bundle argument or the @bundle convention.

We do like our @bundle convention as it looks prettier and you type a lot less.

Examples

Here are some examples of usage

INFO Please note that the i18N services are singleton objects and lives throughout your entire application span.

You can place the i18n@cbi18n service in the prc scope and then use this utility for i18n specific methods anywhere in your layouts and views, below is a simple example:

INFO There are tons of great utility methods in the i18n service that will allow you to work with localization and internationalization. Please view them via the API Docs for the latest methods and arguments.

If you elect not to use property files for your resource bundles, or need to expand your i18n implementation to include content pulled from other sources, the module allows for the specification of a customResourceService in the configuration.

To begin, create a custom resource service which extends the core i18n resource service:

component name="MyCustomResourceService" extends="cbi18n.models.ResourceService" singleton=true{
  property name="Controller" inject="coldbox";
  property name="Wirebox" inject="wirebox";

}

To override the resource bundle used, you would declare a new loadResourceBundle method. To override the implementation of the getResource( i18nResourceLabel ) you would declare a new getResource method. An example, using your database to retrieve an i18n resource bundle:

public void function loadBundle( 
        required string rbLocale=VARIABLES.i18n.getfwLocale() 
) output="false"{
    var bundles = "";

    // Lazy Load?
    if( NOT VARIABLES.controller.settingExists("RBundles") ){
        VARIABLES.controller.setSetting("RBundles",structnew());
    }

    //set bundles ref
    bundles = VARIABLES.controller.getSetting("RBundles");
    var rb = structNew();

    //cache our resource bundle query
    var qRb = new query( datasource=application, cachedWithin=CreateTimeSpan(0, 6, 0, 0) );
    qRb.addParam( name="locale", value=arguments.rbLocale, cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar" );
    qRb.setSQL( "SELECT * from customI18nTable WHERE locale=:locale" );
    var rbResult = = qRb.execute().getResult();
    for( var resource in rbResult ){
        rb[ resource.label ] = resource.value;
    }

    bundles[ arguments.rbLocale ] = rb;
}

Lets say we want to account for a more complex metadata structure in our resource bundles. For example, allow a draft value to allow for administrators to see which items in our bundle are pending review but display the default value to the public. We might also want to add any new resource requests containing a default value as drafts in the system (which we won't cover here). For special circumstances, such as these, we would need to change the implementation of the getResource method to account for this draft functionality:

public string function getResource(
    // The resource (key) to retrieve from the main loaded bundle.
    required any resource,
    //A default value to send back if the resource (key) not found
    any default,
    //Pass in which locale to take the resource from. By default it uses the user's current set locale
    any locale="#VARIABLES.i18n.getfwLocale()#",
    //An array, struct or simple string of value replacements to use on the resource string
    any values,
    //default
    any bundle="default"
){
    //prevent errors via empty label strings from being passed
    if( !len( trim(resource) ) ) return resource;

    //protect from a bad locale value being passed
    if( !len( trim( arguments.locale ) ) ) arguments.locale = VARIABLES.i18n.getfwLocale();

    var thisLocale         = arguments.locale;
    var resourceString = "";

    var rBundles = Controller.getSetting("RBundles");
    var currentUser = Wirebox.getInstance( "SessionService" ).getCurrentUser();

    if( !structKeyExists( rBundles, arguments.locale ) ){
        loadBundle( rbLocale=arguments.locale, rbAlias=arguments.bundle );
    }

    var resourceBundle = rBundles[ arguments.locale ];

    if( structKeyExists( resourceBundle, arguments.resource  ){
        var resource = resourceBundle[ arguments.resource ];
        if( resource.published ){
            return formatResourceObject( resourceObj=resource, args=arguments );
        } else if( !resource.published && currentUser.isAdministrator() ) {
            return formatDraftResource( resourceObj=resource, args=arguments );
        }
    } else if( !isNull( arguments.default ) ) {
        if( !isNull( arguments.values ) ){
            return formatRBString( arguments.default, arguments.values );
        } else {
            return arguments.default;
        }
    } else {
        return renderUnknownTranslation( arguments.resource );
    }
}

The ability to extend and implement custom resource services provides you with a great deal of flexibility in your internationalization efforts. Use cases might include database-driven i18n resources, distributed caching implementations, and variable bundle formats used in third-party tools and plugins.