Calendar data for new locales

Question

We're developing an aplication on JDK 6. This application needs to support Spanish and Basque. Spanish is not a problem as "es" is a supported locale for the JDK but Basque "eu" is not supported. We've used the new SPI API for defining the Date and Currency Symbols for the eu locale, this works fine.
Our problem arises when we use the GregorianCalendar class for the "eu" locale. When we retrieve the first day of the week the method returns 1 (sunday) but in our locale it should be 2 (monday). It seems that when the locale is not known for the JDK it returns the default value (English, I supose).
Does anyone know how to define the CalendarData for the "eu" locale? or at least, change the default value for getFirstDayOfWeek method?
Thanks in advance,
Juanjo

Answer 1

You may have a look at the java.text.spi and java.util.spi packages.
With these packages you can define your own provider classes, based, for instance, on the ICU4J classes. These classes will be used throughout your JVM, so by third party software as well.
I remember having done this once as an experiment. I don't quite remember how to activate it, but I found my source code. Just as an example here how to make use of the com.ibm.icu.text.DateFormatSymbols
The provider class:
package org.pbjar.icu4j;
import java.text.spi.DateFormatSymbolsProvider;
import java.util.Locale;
import org.pbjar.icu4j.wrap.DateFormatSymbolsWrapper;
import com.ibm.icu.text.DateFormatSymbols;
* Wraps com.ibm.icu.text.DateFormatSymbols.
* @author Piet Blok
public class ICU4JDateFormatSymbolsProvider extends DateFormatSymbolsProvider {
    public ICU4JDateFormatSymbolsProvider() {
    @Override
    public Locale[] getAvailableLocales() {
        return ICU4JLocales.getAvailableLocales();
    @Override
    public java.text.DateFormatSymbols getInstance(Locale locale) {
        return new DateFormatSymbolsWrapper(new DateFormatSymbols(locale));
}And here the wrapper class:
package org.pbjar.icu4j.wrap;
import com.ibm.icu.text.DateFormatSymbols;
* Wrapper for com.ibm.icu.text.DateFormatSymbols.
* @author Piet Blok
public class DateFormatSymbolsWrapper extends java.text.DateFormatSymbols {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    DateFormatSymbols symbols;
    public DateFormatSymbolsWrapper(DateFormatSymbols symbols) {
        this.symbols = symbols;
    @SuppressWarnings("unused")
    private DateFormatSymbolsWrapper() {
    @Override
    public Object clone() {
        return new DateFormatSymbolsWrapper((DateFormatSymbols) symbols.clone());
    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object obj) {
        return (obj instanceof DateFormatSymbolsWrapper ? symbols
                .equals((DateFormatSymbolsWrapper) obj) : false);
    @Override
    public String[] getAmPmStrings() {
        return symbols.getAmPmStrings();
    @Override
    public String[] getEras() {
        return symbols.getEras();
    @Override
    public String getLocalPatternChars() {
        return symbols.getLocalPatternChars();
    @Override
    public String[] getMonths() {
        return symbols.getMonths();
    @Override
    public String[] getShortMonths() {
        return symbols.getShortMonths();
    @Override
    public String[] getShortWeekdays() {
        return symbols.getShortWeekdays();
    @Override
    public String[] getWeekdays() {
        return symbols.getWeekdays();
    @Override
    public String[][] getZoneStrings() {
        return symbols.getZoneStrings();
    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        return symbols.hashCode();
    @Override
    public void setAmPmStrings(String[] newAmpms) {
        symbols.setAmPmStrings(newAmpms);
    @Override
    public void setEras(String[] newEras) {
        symbols.setEras(newEras);
    @Override
    public void setLocalPatternChars(String newLocalPatternChars) {
        symbols.setLocalPatternChars(newLocalPatternChars);
    @Override
    public void setMonths(String[] newMonths) {
        symbols.setMonths(newMonths);
    @Override
    public void setShortMonths(String[] newShortMonths) {
        symbols.setShortMonths(newShortMonths);
    @Override
    public void setShortWeekdays(String[] newShortWeekdays) {
        symbols.setShortWeekdays(newShortWeekdays);
    @Override
    public void setWeekdays(String[] newWeekdays) {
        symbols.setWeekdays(newWeekdays);
    @Override
    public void setZoneStrings(String[][] newZoneStrings) {
        symbols.setZoneStrings(newZoneStrings);
}Piet