The message bundle file in the UI layer

This document introduces the message bundle file in CollectionSpace's User Interface (UI) layer.

It also describes how you can change text appearing on many of CollectionSpace's pages by editing the contents of an overlay message bundle file, within the tenant folder for your museum.

Contents

About the message bundle file

The message bundle file in CollectionSpace's UI layer contains multiple lines of text. Each line contains a different text label whose value you can change, which will in turn change the text displayed in a specific place or places on CollectionSpace's web pages.

Within the source code tree for CollectionSpace's UI layer, in a folder named ui, you can find the default message bundle file in src/main/webapp/defaults/bundle/core-messages.properties. This file contains an extensive set of text labels, which are inserted into designated places within HTML templates when CollectionSpace's web pages are displayed in a browser.

You can override the values of any of those default text labels, or add new ones to supplement them, by editing an overlay message bundle file, bundle/core-messages.properties-overlay, inside the tenant folder for your museum. (See Finding your tenant folder.)

If that bundle folder or the core-messages.properties-overlay file don't already exist in your tenant folder, you can create either or both, as needed. You can initially create the core-messages.properties-overlay as an empty file, using your favorite text editor.

Format of each line in the message bundle file

The format of each line in the message bundle file consists of a property and a text label, separated by a colon (":") and a space character:
property: text label

The format of that property, in turn, consists of page name (for a web page, dialog, etc.) followed by an item name specifying some specific text item (such as a field label or header) that will be displayed on that page's HTML template. These are separated by a hyphen ("-"): pagename-itemname

For instance, the label that appears next to the Current Owner field on the Intake procedure page is configured via the following line in the default message bundle file:

By copying that line to your tenant's overlay message bundle file, and editing it there, you can change the value of that text label as it will appear on one or more HTML pages in CollectionSpace.

If you want to keep some (or even nearly all) of the default text labels "as is," simply don't include their text labels in your tenant's core-messages.properties-overlay file. Your tenant's file can be "sparse," nearly empty, containing only the changes you want to make from the defaults.

To delete (aka empty or blank out) a text label, add the relevant property to your tenant's core-messages.properties-overlay file, but give it an empty value (i.e. nothing after the colon (':') separator), like this:

Identifying which text label to change in the message bundle file

To identify which text label you need to change in your overlay message bundle file in your tenant folder, to change some text displayed in a specific place or places on CollectionSpace's web pages:

• Start by scanning the section of the message bundle file that contains text labels for the page (or dialog, etc.) on which you want to change some text, to see if you can readily spot the right label to change. For instance:
  • Text labels beginning with acquisition- pertain to the Acquisition record page.
  • Text labels beginning with login- pertain to the login ("Sign In") page.

Often, by merely scanning those labels, you can find the appropriate text label to change. If that doesn't help, try one of the following techniques:

• Log into a CollectionSpace system.
• Open your browser's web developer tool.
• Right click on a piece of text on any of CollectionSpace's pages, and select the Inspect Element choice, or any similar choice, from the menu. (In some developer tools, you can also use a "magnifying glass" or "inspector" tool for this purpose, and just directly click on the item you wish to inspect.) That will display the HTML markup surrounding that text. In that markup, you may be able to identify a relevant class="" attribute, whose text should look a whole lot like that of the text label you want to change. Examples:
  • An item of text on the Acquisition page, whose class="" attribute is csc-acquisition-acquisitionNote-label, is associated with the text label acquisition-acquisitionNoteLabel in the default message bundle file.
  • An item of text on the login ("Sign In") page, whose class="" attribute is csc-login-rologin, is associated with the text label login-rologin in the default message bundle file.

For instance, using Firefox's Tools->Web Developer...->Inspector tool:

OR

• Inside the folder for the UI source code tree, open the appropriate HTML template file in a text editor, and search for the relevant class="" attribute that appears to match the text that you want to change. Most of the locations in CollectionSpace's HTML templates, that text is inserted from text labels in message bundle files, will have a class="" attribute beginning with csc.
  • You can find these HTML templates inside the ui folder that contains the UI layer source code tree, the within src/main/webapp/defaults/html folder and its sub-folders.

csc-{recordid}-{fieldid}-label

{recordid}-{fieldid}Label: value for that label goes here

<div class="info-pair">
  <div class="header">
    <!-- This is the tag for the label that appears above the field -->
    <div class="label csc-acquisition-acquisitionNote-label"></div>
  </div>
  <div class="content">
    <!-- This is the tag for the field itself -->
    <textarea rows="4" cols="30" class="input-textarea csc-acquisition-acquisition-note" />
  </div>
</div>

# Corresponds to the class csc-acquisition-acquisitionNote-label in the HTML template
acquisition-acquisitionNoteLabel: Acquisition Note

Changing a text label in a message bundle file

Copying your changes to the CollectionSpace server

(Or instead see Configuring CollectionSpace's User Interface (UI) Layer - An Overview.)