In an earlier post I blogged about a how to use a DB table to hold look up data like gender, weekdays or title which can used in different locations as ‘List Of Value’ data (Using one ViewObject for Global Lookup Data (Part 2)).
This third part adds a use case where we add multi language support when we read data from the DB table. This is an enhancement of the use case implemented in part 2. The old use case could load data in one language only. Now we add the the language to the data in the db table to allow retrieval of language specific data.
To make the use case work, we add two columns to the existing table GENERALLOOKUP. The first one holds the language code and the second one an id which is unique in the type and language. We use this new id named ‘GROUPID’ in the LOV to show the data of the selected type.
The ‘GROUPID’ remains identical for each type and language so that we can enter data in different languages. For the language code we use the codes we get from a Locale class. A sample for the data of WEEKDAY Monday:
We start by changing the DB table GENERALLOOKUP we used in the sample introduced in part 2. The sql script setup_db_multilangual.sql which is part of the project workspace, adds the two mentioned columns. You find the link to download the workspace at the end of this post. The script holds the needed data for the multi language look up too.
The final DDL for the GENERALLOOKUP table is
CREATE TABLE "GENERALLOOKUP" ( "ID" NUMBER, "TYPE" VARCHAR2(20 CHAR), "DATA" VARCHAR2(255 CHAR), "LANGUAGE" VARCHAR2(5 CHAR), "GROUPID" NUMBER ) ;
Next we synchronize the existing EO with the new GENERALLOOKUP table to get the new attributes into the EO
Here are some of the dialogs which you see when synchronizing the DB to the business objects
- Differences between DB and EO
- Changes done
- Changes in EO
Now we have to add the new columns to the VO as well
- VO before Adding the new Attributes
- Selecting the new Attributes
- Add the new Attributes to the selected Attributes
These changes now allow to use the VO GeneralLookup to select language dependent look up data from the db. We now a new view criteria, named TypeLookupByLanguageViewCriteria, to use the language information to only select data for one language and one type from the table.
- Creat new ViewCriteria
- Using two Bind Variables
This new view Criteria uses two bind variables to select only data of one type and one language. How to set these variables we see later in this post.
As we don’t want to break the old application we create a new VO based again on the existing Lookuptest entity object and name it ‘LookupMultiLanguageView’
- Create new VO based on LookupTest EO
Next step is to set up the LOVs accessors for the attributes WeekdayId, GenderIs, PositionId and TitleID. Here we only show how to do this for the WeekdayId attribute. The images below showing that we not only set the bindType to ‘WEEKDAY’, but the bindLanguage variable too. Here we use a groovy expression to get the current language from the current locale
- Setup the LOV for the Attribute WeekdayId
- Image 3: Use GenerallookupView to select WEEKDAY
- Groovy Expression to get Language
The real work is done in pictures 3, 4, 5 and 6 where we use the view criteria we’ve build earlier (TypeLookupByLanguageViewCriteria) to select the type and language from the GeneralLookupView.
In Image 3 we use the GenerallookupView as view accessor for the weekdayId. We rename the accessor to WeekdayMultiLanguageLOV for better understanding what the view accessor does. As the WeekdayMultiLanguageLOV can select any type in any language, we have to use the view criteria and set its bind variables to only get the data we want. In this case we set the bindType variable to ‘WEEKDAY’ and the bindLanguage variable to the current language used in the browser. As this language can change, we can’t use a static string like we used for the bindType. The language has to be calculated. For this we use a groovy expression:
oracle.adf.share.logging.ADFLogger LOGGER = oracle.adf.share.logging.ADFLogger.createADFLogger(source.getClass()); loc = adf.context.locale; if (loc == null) { LOGGER.info("Language not set -> en"); return 'en'; } else { lang = loc.language; shortLang = lang.substring(0,2); if (!"#de#it#fr#en#".contains(shortLang)) { LOGGER.info("Language not recognized -> en"); shortLang="en"; } else { LOGGER.info("Language set to -> "+lang.substring(0,2)); shortLang = lang.substring(0,2); } }
Yes, you can do more with groovy then just simple calculations like “sal *12”!
We use groovy expression like a java function to get the locale from the AdfContext (groovy: loc = adf.context.locale;) and from the locale we get the language (groovy: lang = loc.language;). Now, there are some checks to make, like is the locale is set and if the language found is one of the languages we support. In this sample we only support ‘en’, ‘de’, ‘it’ and ‘fr’ but you can add other languages too. As the language we get from the locale can look like ‘en_US’ or ‘de_CH’ we only use the first two characters (groovy: shortLang = lang.substring(0,2);). You can even use a logger to print out information into the log.
We can now test the switching of languages in the application module tester. Before we start the tester we make sure we can change the locale in the tester. Open the menu ‘Tools’->’Preferences’ and select the node ‘Business Components’, then select the ‘Tester’ node where you can add different languages for the tester.
Running the tester
- Show LOV Data for WEEKDAY
- Select Italian
- Select a Language not in the DB
- Showing French Data
- Select ‘French’
- At first Locale is not set
- Run Tester
Please notice the log output which is visible below the tester which shows the groovy log messages.
Finally we adjust the UI by adding a new page MultiLanguageLookup and hook it up with the existing LookupTest page.
Then we need to setup the faces-config.xml to support multiple languages
Now, if we run the application and change the browser language, reload the page we see the language change
- Start with German
- Show Data in Italian
- Show Data in Italian
The sample used in this blog can be downloaded from the ADF-EMG Sample repository. The sample uses JDeveloper 11.1.1.7.0 and the HR DB schema.