Message resource file

Side note: Some of you may wonder about the naming of the sample project: "SimpleDown". When I started to write this tutorial, I had plans to introduce the power of message resources by a real world project. While I was working on this, I got the conviction that this would add too much "noise" around the main topic.

So I dropped all functionality out of SimpleDown and reduced it to the most-simple demo application. However, I had already put a lot of effort into the screen-shots, so I did not rename it to something more suitable a.

The main difficulty on dealing with message resources is not writing the. It is the task to integrate all this stuff at the right places into your project.

This tends to be a bit tricky because the integration has to take place at a couple of places in your project settings. However, once you understood how everything relates to each other, it becomes clear what to do. The figure on the right side shows the build process and dependencies of an app or DLL that uses message resources.

The files depicted in yellow are our actual source files, all other files are intermediate files generated during the build process. The arrows depicted in blue are the points we have to take into account for the integration of mc.

Finally, the intermediate object and binary resource files. The Visual Studio build system knows how to deal with. It also knows how to link the output of cl. But it does not know how to build Messages. Therefore, we have to tell the build system explicitly how to do so.

This is a bit cumbersome, because we have to change configuration settings in four different places. These places are depicted by blue arrows in the figure. The following list shows the necessary steps:. Having understood what is necessary to integrate message resource support into our app or DLL project, we will now go through a step-by-step example. The example shows how to create a simple Win32 Console Application project with message resource support from scratch.

You can do the same for other project types e. You may also perform the following steps on an already existing project. Obviously, you have to skip steps 1 and 2 in this case. Note to Visual Studio. At the time of this writing, Visual Studio 6 is still used by much more people than the newer versions. However, the integration of message resource support into a Visual Studio.

And after all, you have always the possibility to open the example project and convert it to a Visual Studio. NET solution. On the following page, choose "A simple application" to create an initial main function and support for precompiled headers.

Add include directives for windows. If your project does not already contain a resource script, add one. In Visual Studio, choose "New" from the "File" menu, select "Resource Script", and make sure that the "Add to project" option is checked.

Name the file " SimpleDown. Again, choose "File - New", select "Text File", and make sure that the "Add to project" option is checked. Name the file " Messages. Visual Studio does not know how to build. We need to tell it how to do so by adding a custom build rule for the Messages. Right click on the Messages. Used to compile instrumentation manifests and message text files. The compiler generates the message resource files to which your application links.

Use this argument to have the compiler set the customer bit bit 28 in all message IDs. For information on the customer bit, see winerror. Use this argument to specify the character encoding used for all generated text files. Valid names include "ansi" default , "utf-8", and "utf". The Unicode encodings will add a byte order mark. Use this argument to specify the extension to use for the header file. You can specify up to a three characters extension, not including the period.

The default is. Use this argument to specify the folder into which you want the compiler to place the generated header file. The default is the current directory. Use this argument to have the compiler generate a warning if the any message exceeds length characters.

Use this argument to specify the folder into which you want the compiler to place the generated resource compiler script. Use this argument to override the default base name that the compiler uses for the files that it generates.

The default is to use the base name of the filename input file. The instrumentation manifest file or message text file. The file must exist in the current directory. You can specify a manifest file, message text file, or both. The file name must include the extension.

The convention is to use a. Use this argument to create a baseline of your instrumentation. Specify the path to the folder that contains your baseline manifest files.

For subsequent releases, you would then use the -t argument to check the new manifest against the baseline for compatibility issues. Use this argument when you create a new version of your manifest and want to check it for application compatibility against the baseline that you created using the -s argument. The path must point to the folder that contains the. BIN files that the baseline operation created see the -s switch. Prior to MC version 1. If you do not specify this argument, the compiler does not validate your manifest.

Add the following to struts. The input method is inherited by class Register from class ActionSupport. The default behavior of the inherited input method is to return the String input. The result node above specifies that if the returned result is input then render the view register.

By doing the above the view page register. The Struts 2 framework will make those properties defined in Register. You should see a link to registerInput. When you click on the Please Register link your browser should display the register. The form field labels should be the key values from the Register. We can also use the Struts 2 text tag to display values from a properties file.

In thankyou. Since thankyou. How did the value entered for the first name input field get displayed on thankyou. Look back at the value for the thankyou key in the Register. Then call the getFirstName method which returns a String the value the user inputted into the personBean. What if you want a properties file with keys and values that can be referenced from multiple view pages and those view pages are rendered after executing different Action classes?

Struts 2 has the ability to use multiple property files provided the property file is found in the package hierarchy. Place the following in a file named package. Now any view rendered by an Action that is in the hierarchy org. For example add the following markup to helloworld.