How to insert a new line in resource bundle messages

Here is a simple ResourceBundle message files

hello = "Hi \n \n Good Morning \n \n thanks"

If we retrieve the resource bundle key “hello”, we expected the result as following

Hi
 
Good Morning
 
thanks

Unfortunately, Java doesn’t work in this way, “String” will not translate the \n into new line by default. If we retrieve the “hello” from resource bundle directly, we will get the following result. This is not what we want ….

Hi \n \n Good Morning \n \n thanks

Solution

What we need to do is translate the “\n” into a new line in Java. StringEscapeUtils is a handy class to handle this issue. We can use the StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava(String str) method to translate the “\n” into a new line.

StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava(String str) definition

String org.apache.commons.lang.StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava(String str)

Unescapes any Java literals found in the String. For example, it will turn a sequence of ‘\’ and ‘n’ into a newline character, unless the ‘\’ is preceded by another ‘\’.

Parameters:
str the String to unescape, may be null

Reference

http://commons.apache.org/lang/api/org/apache/commons/lang/StringEscapeUtils.html

Oracle Magazine (Free)

Oracle Magazine contains technology strategy articles, sample code, tips, Oracle and partner news, how to articles for developers and DBAs, and more. Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world\'s largest enterprise software company.