Cosmopolitan -- C10N

A Java library, focused on making internationalisation more modular, easier to evolve and maintain, robust-to-change and IDE-friendly without excess of external tools. See the guide for more information.

Motivation

Compare the traditional approach using resource bundles to C10N:

Using resource bundles

First, you need to create the individual bundle files with all translations:

 # Messages_en.properties
com.example.gui.window.title = Hello, {0}!
com.example.gui.window.buttons.ok = OK
com.example.gui.window.buttons.cancel = Cancel

 # Messages_ru.properties
com.example.gui.window.title = Привет, {0}!
com.example.gui.window.buttons.ok = Да
com.example.gui.window.buttons.cancel = Отмена

Then reference messages by their keys from the source code:

ResourceBundle msg =  ResourceBundle.getBundle("Messages");
//get the message
String ok = msg.getString("com.example.gui.window.buttons.ok");
//get message with parameters
String title = MessageFormat.format(
  msg.getString("com.example.gui.window.buttons.ok"), "James");

Doable, but clumsy, and needs extra maintenance for keys.

Using C10N

C10N uses a more java-esque approach: each message is declared as a method on an interface, with all translations stored in annotations.

package com.example.gui;

public interface Window{
  @En("Hello, {0}!")
  @Ru("Привет, {0}!")
  String title(String userName);
  
  @En("OK")
  @Ru("Да")
  String ok();
  
  @En("Cancel")
  @Ru("Отмена")
  String cancel();
}

To retrieve messages

Window msg = C10N.get(Window.class);
//get message
String ok = msg.ok();
//get message with parameter
String title = msg.title("James");

Not only it is much simpler, you will never make a spelling mistake in your key, or miss a message parameter.

If required, you can opt to store all or some of you translations in resource bundles. For more details see the documentation.

Documentation

Download the latest 1.3 release from the download section.

• C10N Guide
• All Features
• Download C10N
• Contributing
• Scala related documentation
• Scala Integration
• Play Framework 2.0 Integration Example

Dependencies and Compatibility

Major project dependencies are listed below: