Spring Webflows locale detected incorrectly as en_US, but evidence suggests locale is changed

Question

I have 4 available locales in my project: ar_AE, en_GB, en_US, ur_PK. The default set up in my localeResolver is en_GB.

No matter what I set my current locale to, when I enter a webflow, the EL expression ${pageContext.response.locale} always evaluates to en_US, but the messages are looked up correctly (so, for example, if I'm currently ar_AE, the text is arabic, the text direction is rtl, but the current language in my JSP is en_US).

My locale setup:

<mvc:interceptors>
    <bean id="localeChangeInterceptor"
        class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.LocaleChangeInterceptor">
        <property name="paramName" value="lang" />
    </bean>
</mvc:interceptors>

<bean id="localeResolver"
    class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.CookieLocaleResolver">
    <property name="defaultLocale" value="en_GB" />
</bean>

My JSP snippet:

<a href="#i18n" class="dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown">
    <span class="${pageContext.response.locale}-i18n-option i18n-option-selected"> 
        <spring:message code="Native Name (${pageContext.response.locale})" /> 
    </span>
    <b class="caret"></b>
</a>

My webflow config:

<!--Maps request paths to flows in the flowRegistry--> 
<bean class="org.springframework.webflow.mvc.servlet.FlowHandlerMapping"> 
    <property name="order" value="0" /> 
    <property name="flowRegistry" ref="flowRegistry" /> 
</bean>

<!-- Dispatches requests mapped to flows to FlowHandler implementations -->
<bean class="org.springframework.webflow.mvc.servlet.FlowHandlerAdapter">
    <property name="flowExecutor" ref="flowExecutor" />
</bean>

<!-- Executes flows: the entry point into the Spring Web Flow system -->
<webflow:flow-executor id="flowExecutor" flow-registry="flowRegistry" />

<!-- The registry of executable flow definitions -->
<webflow:flow-registry id="flowRegistry" flow-builder-services="flowBuilderServices" base-path="/WEB-INF/webflows">
    <webflow:flow-location-pattern value="/**/flow.xml" />
</webflow:flow-registry>

<!-- Plugs in a custom creator for Web Flow views -->
<webflow:flow-builder-services id="flowBuilderServices" view-factory-creator="mvcViewFactoryCreator" development="true" />

<bean id="mvcViewFactoryCreator" class="org.springframework.webflow.mvc.builder.MvcViewFactoryCreator">
    <property name="viewResolvers" ref="viewResolver" />
</bean>

So how do I get the correct current locale to display in my JSP within the webflow?

Answer 1

The problem is apparently that the PageContext hasn't changed for the web flow, and I need to explicitly set the context attribute in my viewResolver bean:

<bean 
    id="viewResolver"
    class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.UrlBasedViewResolver" 
    p:requestContextAttribute="requestContext" 
    p:viewClass="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesView" />

Then I can change the line in my JSP to read:

<span class="${requestContext.locale}-i18n-option i18n-option-selected"> 
    <spring:message code="Native Name (${requestContext.locale})" /> 
</span>

Which reads from the new context attribute requestContext. Since I've used the viewResolver bean for both web flows and non-web-flow pages, this solution works globally.