How to get Locale from its String representation in Java

Question

Is there a neat way of getting a Locale instance from its  programmatic name  as returned by Locale s toString   method  An obvious and ugly solution would be parsing the String and then constructing a new Locale instance according to that  but maybe there s a better way   ready solution for that   The need is that I want to store some locale specific settings in a SQL database  including Locales themselves  but it would be ugly to put serialized Locale objects there  I would rather store their String representations  which seem to be quite adequate in detail

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Option 1     org apache commons lang3 LocaleUtils toLocale  en US     Option 2     Locale forLanguageTag  en-US     Please note Option 1 is  underscore  between language and country   and Option 2 is  dash

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Since Java 7 there is factory method Locale forLanguageTag and instance method Locale toLanguageTag using IETF language tags

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There doesn t seem to be a static valueOf method for this  which is a bit surprising   One rather ugly  but simple  way  would be to iterate over Locale getAvailableLocales    comparing their toString values with your value   Not very nice  but no string parsing required  You could pre-populate a Map of Strings to Locales  and look up your database string in that Map

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Java provides lot of things with proper implementation lot of complexity can be avoided  This returns ms MY   String key    ms-MY   Locale locale   new Locale Builder   setLanguageTag key  build     Apache Commons has LocaleUtils to help parse a string representation  This will return en US  String str    en-US   Locale locale    LocaleUtils toLocale str   System out println locale toString      You can also use locale constructors      Construct a locale from a language code  eg  en  new Locale String language     Construct a locale from language and country  eg  en and US  new Locale String language  String country     Construct a locale from language  country and variant  new Locale String language  String country  String variant     Please check this LocaleUtils and this Locale to explore more methods

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This answer may be a little late  but it turns out that parsing out the string is not as ugly as the OP assumed  I found it quite simple and concise   public static Locale fromString String locale        String parts     locale split      -1       if  parts length    1  return new Locale parts 0        else if  parts length    2                 parts length    3  amp  amp  parts 2  startsWith                return new Locale parts 0   parts 1        else return new Locale parts 0   parts 1   parts 2        I tested this  on Java 7  with all the examples given in the Locale toString   documentation   en    de DE     GB    en US WIN    de  POSIX    zh CN  Hans    zh TW  Hant-x-java   and  th TH TH  u-nu-thai    IMPORTANT UPDATE  This is not recommended for use in Java 7  according to the documentation      In particular  clients who parse the output of toString into language  country  and variant fields can continue to do so  although this is strongly discouraged   although the variant field will have additional information in it if script or extensions are present    Use Locale forLanguageTag and Locale toLanguageTag instead  or if you must  Locale Builder

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If you are using Spring framework in your project you can also use   org springframework util StringUtils parseLocaleString  en US      Documentation      Parse the given String representation into a Locale

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See the Locale getLanguage    Locale getCountry      Store this combination in the database instead of the  programatic name     When you want to build the Locale back  use public Locale String language  String country   Here is a sample code         May contain simple syntax error  I don t have java right now to test      but this is a bigger picture for your algo    public String localeToString Locale l        return l getLanguage           l getCountry       public Locale stringToLocale String s        StringTokenizer tempStringTokenizer   new StringTokenizer s           if tempStringTokenizer hasMoreTokens        String l   tempStringTokenizer nextElement        if tempStringTokenizer hasMoreTokens        String c   tempStringTokenizer nextElement        return new Locale l c

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Well  I would store instead a string concatenation of Locale getISO3Language    getISO3Country   and getVariant   as key  which would allow me to latter call Locale String language  String country  String variant  constructor   indeed  relying of displayLanguage implies using the langage of locale to display it  which make it locale dependant  contrary to iso language code   As an example  en locale key would be storable as  en EN en US   and so on

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You can use this on Android  Works fine for me   private static final Pattern localeMatcher   Pattern compile                                             public static Locale parseLocale String value        Matcher matcher   localeMatcher matcher value replace  -              return matcher find                 TextUtils isEmpty matcher group 5                     TextUtils isEmpty matcher group 3                         TextUtils isEmpty matcher group 1                             null                           new Locale matcher group 1                         new Locale matcher group 1   matcher group 3                     new Locale matcher group 1   matcher group 3                                matcher group 5                 null

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Method that returns locale from string exists in commons-lang library  LocaleUtils toLocale localeAsString

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Old question with plenty of answers  but here s more solutions    Get Locale From String Converts a String to a Locale

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Because I have just implemented it   In Groovy Grails it would be   def locale   Locale getAvailableLocales   find   availableLocale - gt        return availableLocale toString   equals searchedLocale

[java] How to get Locale from its String representation in Java?

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