Spring MVC internationalization not working

Question

I'm tring to make my webapp display different labels according to the user's language of choice, but I can't seem to make it work properly. It does read the messages_en.properties and messages_de.properties files whenever I change the "defaultLocale" in the servlet xml file. ...?lang=en and ...?lang=de are not working at all though.

<property name="defaultLocale" value="de" />

My xml files are as follows:

web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd" version="3.0" metadata-complete="true">

    <display-name>SpringTest3</display-name>

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>SpringTest3</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>SpringTest3</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
    </listener>

    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>
        /WEB-INF/application-context.xml
    </param-value>
    </context-param>
</web-app>

application-context.xml

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.1.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.1.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.1.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/security
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/security/spring-security-3.1.xsd">

    <context:component-scan base-package="com.qwerty.controllers" />
    <mvc:annotation-driven />

    <import resource="spring-datasource.xml" />
</beans>

SpringTest3-sevlet.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.1.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.1.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.1.xsd">

    <mvc:resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/resources/" />

    <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
        <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/" />
        <property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
    </bean>

    <bean id="messageSource" class="org.springframework.context.support.ResourceBundleMessageSource">
        <property name="basename" value="messages" />
    </bean>

    <bean id="localeResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.SessionLocaleResolver">
        <property name="defaultLocale" value="de" />
    </bean>

    <bean id="localeChangeInterceptor" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.LocaleChangeInterceptor">
        <property name="paramName" value="lang" />
    </bean>

    <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.support.ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping">
        <property name="interceptors">
            <list>
                <ref bean="localeChangeInterceptor" />
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>
</beans>

Answer 1

You are incorrectly defining MVC handling in your root context ( <context:component-scan> on controllers and <mvc:annotation-driven> inside application-context.xml ). Move that to the servlet context ( SpringTest3-sevlet.xml ) and initialize locale interceptor via :

<mvc:interceptors>
    <bean id="localeChangeInterceptor" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.LocaleChangeInterceptor">
        <property name="paramName" value="lang" />
    </bean>
</mvc:interceptors>

Also drop your unnecessary handler mapping definition ( ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping ).

If you are not sure what are the differences between root and servlet contexts, check other answers on this topic (eg Difference between applicationContext.xml and spring-servlet.xml in Spring Framework ).