Using a custom DateFormatProvider in GWT

[Panam]

Hi,

since the J2EE runtime seems to revert to some inappropriate standard
locale when using the actual locale "ta-IN", I've written a customized
DateFormatProvider and successfully deployed it to the application
server. It looks like this:

public class TamilNaduDateFormatProvider extends
java.text.spi.DateFormatProvider{

@Override
public DateFormat getTimeInstance(int style, Locale locale) {
return DateFormat.getTimeInstance(style, Locale.UK);
}

@Override
public DateFormat getDateInstance(int style, Locale locale) {
return DateFormat.getDateInstance(style, Locale.UK);
}

@Override
public DateFormat getDateTimeInstance(int dateStyle, int timeStyle,
Locale locale) {
return DateFormat.getDateTimeInstance(dateStyle, timeStyle,
Locale.UK);
}

@Override
public Locale[] getAvailableLocales() {
return new Locale[]{new Locale("ta", "IN")};
}

}

It needs to be packed into a jar with some meta information and
deployed to the runtime's lib/ext directory.
Here is some background: http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/extensions/index.html
For server code, this works fine. However, the GWT-UI in my case still
uses that inappropriate default locale (even after doing a
recompilation using the extended (by the customized
DateFormatProvider) runtime.
So my question is: How does GWT determine the proper date formatting
for the locale sent from the browser and how could I plug-in into this
system to have "ta-IN" properly supported?
Apparently, the standard Java mechanism does not work, or am I wrong?
Is it because GWT uses the SDK rather than the runtime? I tried to
create the corresponding lib/ext Folder even in the SDK and put the
jar there but this also did not help...

Regards,
panam

[John A. Tamplin]

GWT uses the data from the Unicode CLDR, and supports ta and ta_LK, so ta_IN should get the ta defaults, which should be appropriate for IN.  If you believe there should be a specialization for ta in India, then I suggest filing a bug against CLDR to add it.

Aside from that, search for *_ta.* under user/src/com/google/gwt/i18n and make a copy under *_ta_IN.* and edit it as needed.  You could put those files in your own project and GWT will use them if they are on the classpath.  

[Panam]

Thanks, just the information I needed.