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One note on the location of the properties files: like HTML files, they must be in the same package, and the same classloader as the component they are associated with. In practice they live next to each other in the same directory.
If you want Wicket to get its resources from somewhere else (e.g. from a database), you can implement the interface org.apache.wicket.resource.loader.IStringResourceLoader and configure this in the init() method of your application class.

References: ExtensionResourceNameIterator, ComponentStringResourceLoader, and for real control freaks the new PackageStringResourceLoader.

Reloading and caching

When Wicket is started in development mode, changed properties files are detected and reloaded. To properly make use of this feature from an IDE, you should run Wicket directly from the compiled sources, for example with the Start file, included in every QuickStart. In Eclipse you just save the properties file, in IntelliJ you must do a make (Ctrl-F9) before changes are picked up.
In production mode, resolved properties are heavily cached for performance. (Same applies to html files.)

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And more!
The Java property syntax is also still available (e.g. like {0,Date}, {2,number,###.##} etc.)? You can find all forms in the javadocs of StringResourceModel.

The trouble with property files

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If you want runnable code you can download the complete example code (a Maven 2 project based on Wicket's QuickStart). See below for instructions.

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Despite all of the above, there always remain some cases in which you need direct access to the messages. Luckily Wicket provides access through the Localizer. You can get the localizer from any component with getLocalizer().

Again, see the complete example code for an example.

Encoding troubles

Fairly unknown to beginning programmers is that you are only allowed to use ISO-8859-1 encoding in java properties files. If you live in Europe this is a fairly annoying as many languages have characters that are not known to ISO-8859-1 (for example the euro symbol €). The simple workaround is escaping: cree\u00EBr instead of creeër. (I always use this site to look up the ISO codepoint.)

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To test the code in this article I created a small test application. Unzip it, and run mvn jetty:run to start it. When it is started access it on http://localhost:8080/i18ntest^{Image Removed}.

Changing resource settings

Finally, if you need more power, you can change all of Wicket's settings in the init() method of your application. Call getResourceSettings() to get a IResourceSettings instance. Let look at some of the options.

ThrowExceptionOnMissingResource: this will make Wicket throw an exception when a resource is missing. At first this may seem a convenient way to test that you listed all messages in a properties file. However, many standard Wicket components use defaults as fall back, so this option is mostly useless. Alternatively, watch for warnings in the log.

UseDefaultOnMissingResource: this will make Wicket use the default value (e.g. the text within the wicket:message element) when the resource is not found in a properties file. Setting this to true (the default) may hide errors for a long time, but setting this false will make your site not work if you made an error. Choose carefully.

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