Hello all you AOP gurus.
An amusing idea occurred to me, and I'm
doing my darndest to try and implement it, but having troubles...
My idea is to use AspectJ as an
internationalization mechanism for Java programs to go multi-lingual "on the
cheap". It would work by putting Around pointcuts for string literal
references that will, when they are referenced, get themselves replaced
with a matching hashed string from a ResourceBundle in another
language.
The idea is simple. The idea is
beautiful. The implementation is neither.
My first idea was to capture String.new(..)
calls, assuming that, when a string literal like:
String STR="blah blah"
.. occurs, there is a string creation for
the STR variable, and another for the "blah blah" literal, which is then copied
into the s under the covers.
The idea then would be to detect and ignore
STR's creation, and advise the creation of "blah blah" by returning a string
different than the one created.
Such detection becomes even more vital when
one considers the following example:
String INPUT=new
BufferedReader(System.in).readLine();
if(!INPUT.equals("GOODINPUT"))
System.out.println("Your
input, "+INPUT+", was not GOODINPUT.");
In this case, we would need to advise the
creation of literals "GOODINPUT", "Your input," and ", was not GOODINPUT" but
*ignore* the creation of INPUT itself and any value it is assigned.
This is also why it is insufficient to
advise System.out.println(String) calls -- since by the time it gets to that
point, the string has been mangled with the users INPUT, and is no longer in a
translatable state.
So that's the plan: what have I
tried?
1. I can advise StringBuffer calls, which
appear to occur when a String needs to manipulate itself by appending data and
the like.
2. I can advise System.out.println(..)
calls, for what good that's worth (NONE).
3. I can NOT advise java.lang.String.new(..)
init()'s. They are ignored, utterly, completely, and always.
That last is my real sticking point. I
was hoping to somehow capture those String inits and somehow (don't know how)
"detect" whether the init is of a string literal, or a new user
variable.
Good input is, as always, greatly
appreciated.
- Bo Zimmerman
