Support i18n in existing application?

Question

I have java/spring based web application with front end in JSP/HTML/JS/Jquery.

We already have spring based i18n support.

1. In JSP labels are coming from property files.
2. html/browser download the js file specific to locale which contains validatins messages.

Problem for both above points , half of the labels/messages are hardcoded in jsp/js files instead of picking them up from resource bundle.Now we need to replace those harcoded labels/messages with resource bundle/ js files.

I can think of only manual solution where developer need to go through each jsp/js files and see if any hard coded message exist. If yes pick it fromresource bundle. Is there any better strategy to automate this task where I can get list of all hardcoded messages in jsp and js file with some utility/third party plugin etc

• Robert Harvey: Is there something you can search for in the source code?
• user3198603: No there is no specific pattern. Right now I can think of going through each file

Answer 1

I almost hate to suggest this given my dislike of regexes, but would a regex search for quoted strings work:

/\v"([^"]|\n)*"

I found this one here - Regex to search double quoted strings on multiple lines

This should give you a complete list of files that you'll need to edit.

Unfortunately, there's nothing that can automate the actual replacement of the string with a call/reference to the resource bundle.

• Laiv: The regex should look into tags. Otherwise, the regex is going to return almost all the jsps, due to tag"s attributes also have quoted text.
• ChrisF: @Laiv ah. Well, there you reach the limit of my regex knowledge ;) It's probably possible to modify the regex to look for quoted strings inside tags, but I'm not sure how to go about that.
• Laiv: It's a nightmare... As you commented, this is a job to do manually. Also a job for QA :-)