Adobe® Flex® 4 Language Reference
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mx.resources 
IResourceBundle 
Packagemx.resources
Interfacepublic interface IResourceBundle
Implementors ResourceBundle

Language Version: ActionScript 3.0
Product Version: Flex 3
Runtime Versions: Flash Player 9, AIR 1.1

The IResourceBundle and IResourceManager interfaces work together to provide localization support for Flex applications.

There are three main concepts involved in localization: locales, resources, and resource bundles.

A locale specifies a language and a country for which your application has been localized. For example, the locale "en_US" specifies English as spoken in the United States. (See the mx.resources.Locale class for more information.)

A resource is a named value that is locale-dependent. For example, your application might have a resource whose name is "OPEN" and whose value for an English locale is "Open" but whose value for a French locale is "Ouvrir".

A resource bundle is a named group of resources whose values have been localized for a particular locale. A resource bundle is identified by the combination of its bundleName and its locale, and has a content Object that contains the name-value pairs for the bundle's resources.

The IResourceBundle interface represents a specific resource bundle. However, most applications will only need to use IResourceManager. A single ResourceManager object implementing this interface manages multiple resource bundles, possibly for multiple locales, and provides access to the resources that they contain. For example, you can retrieve a specific resource as a String by calling resourceManager.getString(bundleName, resourceName). By changing the localeChain property of the ResourceManager, you can change which resource bundles are searched for resource values.

Generally, you do not create resource bundles yourself; instead, they are usually compiled from *.properties files. A properties file named MyResources.properties produces a resource bundle with "MyResources" for its bundleName. You generally produce multiple versions of each properties file, one for each locale that your application supports.

Flex properties files are similar to Java properties files, except that they also support MXML's Embed() and ClassReference() directives. These directives work the same way in a properties file as they do in a CSS file, producing class references. Also, the encoding for Flex properties files is always assumed to be UTF-8.

The Flex framework's resources have been localized for U.S. English (the "en_US" locale) and for Japanese (the "ja_JP" locale). The framework resources are organized into multiple bundles corresponding to framework packages; for example, the "formatters" bundle is used by classes in the mx.formatters package. (There is also a "SharedResources" bundle for resources used by multiple packages.)

The properties files for the framework resources, such as formatters.properties, can be found in the frameworks/projects/framework/bundles/{locale}/src directories of the Flex SDK. Your applications normally link against the Flex framework as a precompiled library, framework.swc, in the frameworks/libs directory. This library has no resources in it. Instead, the framework resources have been compiled into separate resource bundle libraries such as framework_rb.swc. These are located in the frameworks/locales/{locale} directories and your application must also link in one or more of these.

You are free to organize your application's own resources into whatever bundles you find convenient. If you localize your application for locales other than "en_US" and "ja_JP", you should localize the framework's properties files for those locales as well and compile additional resource bundle libaries for them.

When your application starts, the ResourceManager is automatically populated with whatever resource bundles were compiled into the application. If you create a code module, by default the resources that its classes need are compiled into the module. When the module is loaded into an application, any bundles that the application does not already have are added to the ResourceManager.

You can compile "resource modules" that have only resources in them, and load them with the loadResourceModule() method of the ResourceManager. With resource modules, you can support multiple locales by loading the resources you need at run time rather than compiling them into your application.

Although the ResourceManager is normally populated with resource bundles that were compiled into your application or loaded from modules, you can also programmatically create resource bundles and add them to the ResourceManager yourself with the addResourceBundle() method.

See also



Public Properties
 PropertyDefined By
  bundleName : String
[read-only] A name that identifies this resource bundle, such as "MyResources".
IResourceBundle
  content : Object
[read-only] An object containing key-value pairs for the resources in this resource bundle.
IResourceBundle
  locale : String
[read-only] The locale for which this bundle's resources have been localized.
IResourceBundle
Property Detail

bundleName

property
bundleName:String  [read-only]

Language Version: ActionScript 3.0
Product Version: Flex 3
Runtime Versions: Flash Player 9, AIR 1.1

A name that identifies this resource bundle, such as "MyResources".

This read-only property is set when a resource bundle is constructed.

Resource bundles that are automatically created from compiled properties files have bundle names based on the names of those files. For example, a properties file named MyResources.properties will produce a resource bundle whose bundleName is "MyResources".

The ResourceManager can manage multiple bundles with the same bundleName as long as they have different values for their locale property.



Implementation
    public function get bundleName():String

content

property 
content:Object  [read-only]

Language Version: ActionScript 3.0
Product Version: Flex 3
Runtime Versions: Flash Player 9, AIR 1.1

An object containing key-value pairs for the resources in this resource bundle.

In general, you should access resources by using IResourceManager methods such as getString(), rather than directly accessing them in a resource bundle. However, if you are programmatically creating your own resource bundles, you can initialize them with resources, as follows:

      var rb:IResourceBundle = new ResourceBundle("fr_FR", "MyResources");
      rb.content["LANGUAGE"] = "Francais";
      rb.content["GREETING"] = "Bonjour";
      

When a resource bundle is produced by compiling a properties file, its resource values are either of type String or Class. For example, if the properties file contains

      LANGUAGE=English
      MINIMUM_AGE=18
      ENABLED=true
      LOGO=Embed("logo.png")
      

then the value of the LANGUAGE resource is the String "English", the value of the MINIMUM_AGE resource is the String "18", the value of the ENABLED resource is the String "true", and the value of the LOGO resource is a Class that represents the embedded PNG file.

You can use IResourceManager methods such as getInt() and getBoolean() to convert resource strings like "18" and "true" into the type that your code expects.



Implementation
    public function get content():Object

locale

property 
locale:String  [read-only]

Language Version: ActionScript 3.0
Product Version: Flex 3
Runtime Versions: Flash Player 9, AIR 1.1

The locale for which this bundle's resources have been localized. This is a String such as "en_US" for U.S. English.

This read-only property is set when a resource bundle is constructed.

Resource bundles that are automatically created from compiled properties files have locales based on the -compiler.locale option of the mxmlc or compc compilers. For example, suppose that you compile your application with the option -compiler.locale=en_US,ja_JP and that you have specified -compiler.source-path=resources/{locale} so that your application's resources, located in resources/en_US/MyResources.properties and resources/ja_JP/MyResources.properties, are found. Then your application will have two resource bundles whose bundleName is "MyResources", one whose locale is "en_US" and one whose locale is "ja_JP".



Implementation
    public function get locale():String