Programmatically refresh Spring mvc resource bundle OR Inject Spring ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource OR Spring message translation found in JSP but not in controller
Define your ResourceBundle property in applicationContext.xml file like:
<!-- Message Source for appstrings --> <bean id="messageSource" class="org.springframework.context.support.ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource"> <property name="basename" value="WEB-INF/strings/appstrings" /> </bean>
In you Java class/controller auto-wire it as:
private ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource messageSource;
@Autowired
public void setMessageSource(MessageSource messageSource) {
this.messageSource = (ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource) ((DelegatingMessageSource) messageSource).getParentMessageSource();
}Then call clearCache() in any function in that class/controller.
messageSource.clearCache();
This will work for sure and you can refresh you resource bundle message property file in container without refreshing server.
One thing to note is:
When you try to run it through messageSource in your controller, you get NOTHING, empty string. And if you look closely, you will find that you have a DelegatingMessageSource in your messageSource property, with an empty parent source, which means it is EMPTY, i.e. always returns blank.
I wrote this in spring-servlet.xml file and got this exception in controller
ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource incompatible with org.springframework.context.support.DelegatingMessageSource
Well, here’s the thing: Spring will setup a DelegatingMessageSource when it can’t find a message source definition. What’s that, you say? it DID find a message source, it found it for my View! That’s true, it did find it for the view, but not for your controller. Why is that? I don’t really know, but fortunately, I know how to fix it 
So, here’s the solution for this little challenge: move your messageSource definition from spring-servlet.xml to applicationContext.xml!
This will let Spring find your messageSource for your Controller as well, and all will be well.