We were faced by an interesting challenge: our JSF application should display boilerplate text – titles, button labels, prompt, error messages, tool tips etc, – in a context sensitive way. Not just by language, region and variant – the well known dimensions along which the standard JSF and Java mechanism works with Resource Bundles. Beyond that simple ‘locale’ sensitivity – which we also needed – we need a more specialized context dependency. Along several dimensions.

For example when a user of younger age category approaches the web application, the text presented should be (or at least could be) different from whatever we show our senior users. Also when the application is accessed in the context of a certain brand or company the text may need to be different from other brand or company contexts. And the marketing department came up with the ability to presents some text tailored to the time of year – Winter or Summer, Holiday Season or no Christmas in sight – or the day of the week – working day or weekend. Good old marketing department – if they were to rule the world….

And so we got started. How can we cater for these various context dependencies, along various mutually More >