Dynamically changing the language during the session

Allow users to change the language during their session. :If you want your users to be able to change the language during the session, use the following command provided by WebSphere Portal:

<portal-navigation:url command="ChangeLanguage">
   <portal-navigation:urlParam name="locale" value="language"/>
</portal-navigation:url>

where language is the two character code for the required language, such as en, de, or fr. For a list of the available languages and their two character codes refer to Language support.

For users to be able to dynamically change the language for the session, add a link to the portal theme with the following text and link reference:

• The text displayed with the link specifies the language to change to.

• The link reference calls the command described above with the locale parameter corresponding to the specified language.

Users can then click this link to change to the language specified by the locale parameter with the command. To make more than one language available to users, you create a separate link for each language.

Example:

To create links for English and German, add the lines shown in the following example to the file banner_toolbar.jsp :

<!-- add these lines -->
<a href="<portal-navigation:url command="ChangeLanguage"><portal-navigation:urlParam name="locale" 
     value="en"/></portal-navigation:url>">English</a>
<a href="<portal-navigation:url command="ChangeLanguage"><portal-navigation:urlParam name="locale" 
     value="de"/></portal-navigation:url>">Deutsch</a>



<%-- logout button --%>

The file banner_toolbar.jsp resides in the following directory:

UNIX: PROFILE_HOME/installedApps/node_name/wps.ear/wps.war/themes/html/IBM

i5/OS: AppServer_root_usr/installedApps/node_name/wps.ear/wps.war/themes/html/IBM

Windows: PROFILE_HOME\installedApps\node_name\wps.ear\wps.war\themes\html\IBM

Notes:

• The changed setting applies only for the duration of the current session.

  When the user logs out and back in again, the portal applies the default language as determined by the steps described under Selecting and changing the language.

• The previous examples use the portal: prefix to designate JSP tags from the portal tag library in portal.tld. Your custom JSPs might use a different tag prefix. Refer to Tags used by the portal JSPs for more information.

• Important for every operating system: Touch the Default.jsp file after editing any JSP files and before any restart. This updates the timestamp on the file to the current time and will signal a recompile of Default.jsp to incorporate the edit changes from other JSP files. Enter:

   touch Default.jsp
  

  An alternative is to edit (open and save) Default.jsp, which has the same effect as the touch command. After updating banner_toolbar.jspf and mainMenu.jsp, restart WebSphere Portal unless reloading is enabled.

Parent topic:

Language support

Related concepts

Set the language fallback filter

Related information

Supporting a new language
Changing the character set for a language
Select and changing the language
Tags used by the portal JSPs

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