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Identifying the Language Code / LocaleLocate this document in the navigation structure

For the identification of languages, the framework uses a language code of type string. Currently, SAPUI5 accepts the following two syntax forms:

  • The Java Locale syntax that combines a lower case ISO 639 alpha-2 or alpha-3 language code with an ISO 3166 alpha-2 country code. Both codes are combined with an underscore. An arbitrary sequence of variant identifiers (also separated by underscores) can be appended as a third component.

    Example: en_US, zh_TN_Traditional

  • Language codes according to the defacto standard BCP 47 (see IETF BCP-47). Most modern browsers use these codes for language identification. As of JDK 1.7 the Java locale class supports them as well.

    Example: bs-Cyrl-BA, i-klingon

Current Language Code / Locale

SAPUI5 has the notion of a current language. It is determined from the following sources of information. The sources are ordered increasingly by priority and the last available user language/locale wins:

  1. Hard-coded UI5 default locale ('en')
  2. Potentially configured user language (window.navigator.userLanguage)
  3. Potentially configured browser language (window.navigator.browserLanguage)
  4. General language information from the browser (window.navigator.language)
  5. Locale configured in the application coding (jsdoc:symbols/sap.ui.core.Configuration)
  6. Locale configured via URL parameters

You use the configuration API to retrieve the resulting current language as follows: 

var sCurrentLocale = sap.ui.getCore().getConfiguration().getLanguage();
Note The syntax of the returned value depends on the syntax used for configuration. If the information source is one of the browser language properties, the returned language most likely is in BCP-47 format. If it is configured as a URL parameter, the user might have choosen the JDK Locale syntax.
Note In the Internet Explorer (IE), none of the window.navigator.* properties reflects the settings of the Language Preference dialog in IE. Instead, IE returns the language of the OS installation as browserLanguage and the language from the OS regional settings as userLanguage. As a result, the settings in the Language Preference dialog cannot be taken into account for the current language of SAPUI5. This is often confusing for developers and a known shortcoming in IE. The only way to circumvent this is an additional server request where IE provides the corresponding setting in theAccept-Language header. As this technique requires a backend component and SAPUI5 must be able to run without any server component, such a request is not implemented yet.