ZK Developer's Reference/Internationalization/Locale-Dependent Resources

Overview

Many resources depend on the Locale and, sometimes, the browser. For example, you might need to use a larger font for Chinese characters to have better readability.

Specifying Locale- and browser-dependent URL

ZK can handle this for you automatically if you specify the URL with asterisk *. The algorithm is as follows.

One "*" is specified in an URI

Such as /my*.css, then "*" will be replaced with a proper locale code depending on the preferences of user's browser. For example:

• URI: /my*.css
• User's preferences: de_DE

Then ZK look for files in the order below one-by-one in your web site until any of them is found.:

1. /my_de_DE.css
2. /my_de.css
3. /my.css

Two or more "*" are specified in a URI

Such as "/my*/lang*.css", then the first "*" will be replaced with a browser code as follows:

• ie for Internet Explorer
• saf for Chrome, Safari
• moz for firefox and other browsers.

Moreover, the last asterisk will be replaced with a proper Locale as described in the previous rule. In summary, the last asterisk represents the Locale, while the first asterisk represents the browser type.

Note

The last asterisk that represents the Locale must be placed right before the first dot ("."), or at the end if no dot at all. Furthermore, no following slash (/) is allowed, i.e., it must be part of the filename, rather than a directory. If the last asterisk doesn't fulfill this constraint, it will be eliminated (not ignored).

For example, "/my/lang.css*" is equivalent to "/my/lang.css".

In other words, you can consider it as neutral to the Locale.

Tip: We can apply this rule to specify a URI depending on the browser type, but not depending on the Locale. For example, "/my/lang*.css*" will be replaced with "/my/langie.css" if Internet Explorer is the current user's browser.

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Example

In the following example, we assume the preferred Locale is de_DE and the browser is Internet Explorer.

URI	Resources that are searched
/css/norm*.css	/norm_de_DE.css /norm_de.css /norm.css
/css-*/norm*.css	/css-ie/norm_de_DE.css /css-ie/norm_de.css /css-ie/norm.css
/img*/pic*/lang*.png	/imgie/pic*/lang_de_DE.png /imgie/pic*/lang_de.png /imgie/pic*/lang.png
/img*/lang.gif	/img/lang.gif
/img/lang*.gif*	/img/langie.gif
/img*/lang*.gif*	/imgie/lang*.gif

Locating Locale- and browser-dependent resources in Java

In addition to ZUML, you could handle browser- and Locale-dependent resource in Java. Here are a list of methods that you could use.

• The encodeURL, forward, and include methods in Execution for encoding URL, forwarding to another page and including a page. In most cases, these methods are all you need.
• The locate, forward, and include method in Servlets for locating Web resouces. You rarely need them when developing ZK applications, but useful for writing a servlet, portlet or filter.
• The encodeURL method in Encodes for encoding URL. You rarely need them when developing ZK applications, but useful for writing a Servlet, Portlet or Filter.

• The locate method in Locators for locating class resources.

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