I don’t use this often, and only recently discovered this feature. Eclipse allows you to “externalize” all or specific strings in your project. This means that any string you’re using in your application can be stored in a properties file outside of your program. This essentially separates your text from the programming. Why would this be useful? Suppose you’re building an application that you want to translate into other languages. Rather than hard-code the text into your program, you can simply load up different property files depending on the language. See the potential? Now let’s see how it’s done.

In your project, go to Source -> Externalize Strings… from the menu.

Select the strings you want to externalize and press next.

You may be prompted that the property file does not exist. Click next.

Next you will see an overview of what is about to be done. You can click finish.

Finally, you will notice a messages.properties file in your project. Open it up. It will look something like this:

Feel free to edit this file to change the text, and there is no need to update your code! Obviously, if you are planning to do language translation for your application, it will require a bit more logic than this, but this is a good start.

Tags: eclipse, externalize, string externalization

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 at 2:42 pm and is filed under IDEs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.