bean:message jsp tag & escaping parameter replacement

[Jon Barber <jo...@acm.org>]

Dear All,

We want to store CSS as message resources as we white label our site for
different partners. The white labelling takes place through our own
content management system, which we have interfaced struts to via our
own implementation of the MessageResourcesFactory.

Everything works fine, apart from style sheets. Looking through the
struts source for 1.2.7 it's because Struts strips any message content
of single characters before performing an argument replacement using the
java.text.MessageFormat class.

Now this is fine for when you want to do something of the form :

<bean:message key="some.key" arg0="hello"/>

but we don't.

Our CSS has the usual stuff, including sequences such as "{blah; blah
blah}", and this causes npe's in the text replacement as it's seen as a
token. If we try and escape it as per the javadocs with '{' blah '}'
it's stripped by Struts !

Looking at the code for bean:message (MessageTag.java) reveals that it
invokes the underlying TagUtils method that accepts an array of Object[]
as text replacement params even when they are not set ! So:

1. Isn't this a bug ? Surely, of arg0=arg1=arg2=null then the TagUtils
call that doesn't accept text replacement args & so doesn't strip the
message should be called ?
2. Is there any way, short of writing our own version, to get the
message bypassing the whole text replacement / stripping stuff ? If not,
we can't have any occurrences of "{<some text>}" anywhere in our messages ?
3. Just out of interest, why is the message source stripped anyway ?

Thanks,

Jon.

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Re: bean:message jsp tag & escaping parameter replacement

[Jon Barber <jo...@acm.org>]

Niall Pemberton wrote:

>
>However, in the current release of Struts (1.2.7) you can achieve the same
>by overriding the escape() method and in your custom MessageResources
>implementation:
>
>     protected String escape(String string) {
>        return string;
>    }
>
>That way your '{' blah '}' stuff should be left unchanged  and then TagUtils
>should not try and do the text replacement.
>
>Niall
>  
>
Niall,

Fantastic, exactly what I was after. Thanks.

Jon.

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Re: bean:message jsp tag & escaping parameter replacement

[Niall Pemberton <ni...@blueyonder.co.uk>]

From: "Jon Barber" <jo...@acm.org>


> We want to store CSS as message resources as we white label our site for
> different partners. The white labelling takes place through our own
> content management system, which we have interfaced struts to via our
> own implementation of the MessageResourcesFactory.
>
> Everything works fine, apart from style sheets. Looking through the
> struts source for 1.2.7 it's because Struts strips any message content
> of single characters before performing an argument replacement using the
> java.text.MessageFormat class.

Don't you mean "single quotes" rather than "single characters"?

> Now this is fine for when you want to do something of the form :
>
> <bean:message key="some.key" arg0="hello"/>
>
> but we don't.
>
> Our CSS has the usual stuff, including sequences such as "{blah; blah
> blah}", and this causes npe's in the text replacement as it's seen as a
> token. If we try and escape it as per the javadocs with '{' blah '}'
> it's stripped by Struts !

It doesn't "strip it out" - it automatically escapes single quotes - so it
turns '{' blah '}'  into ''{'' blah ''}''

> Looking at the code for bean:message (MessageTag.java) reveals that it
> invokes the underlying TagUtils method that accepts an array of Object[]
> as text replacement params even when they are not set ! So:

I think you're mistaken - the issue is the "single quote" escaping in
MessageResources (in the escape() method) - I changed it recently so that
you can configure the MessageResources to "turn off" this behaviour:

   http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=32584#c7

However, in the current release of Struts (1.2.7) you can achieve the same
by overriding the escape() method and in your custom MessageResources
implementation:

     protected String escape(String string) {
        return string;
    }

That way your '{' blah '}' stuff should be left unchanged  and then TagUtils
should not try and do the text replacement.

Niall

> 1. Isn't this a bug ? Surely, of arg0=arg1=arg2=null then the TagUtils
> call that doesn't accept text replacement args & so doesn't strip the
> message should be called ?
> 2. Is there any way, short of writing our own version, to get the
> message bypassing the whole text replacement / stripping stuff ? If not,
> we can't have any occurrences of "{<some text>}" anywhere in our messages
?
> 3. Just out of interest, why is the message source stripped anyway ?

Its to make life easier - if you want to see something like "Jon Barber's
code is...." displayed - then Struts automatically escapes the single quote
so that you don't have to in the message resources.

Niall

> Thanks,
>
> Jon.



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