Portal Language through code

Question

Hi,
I currently have the following code to check the language of a user within Portal, but when the user has no language populated I would like to set this to a default.  How can I check the value as when I have coded this before this has errored.
IUser me = request.getUser();
String language = "en";
Locale myLocale = me.getLocale();
language = myLocale.getLanguage();
try {
IUserMaint modUser = userFact.getMutableUser(me.getUid());
if (language.equalsIgnoreCase(""))
     modUser.setLocale(Locale.UK);
if (language.equalsIgnoreCase("english"))
     modUser.setLocale(Locale.UK);
if (language.equalsIgnoreCase("italian"))
     modUser.setLocale(Locale.ITALIAN);
if (language.equalsIgnoreCase("german"))
     modUser.setLocale(Locale.GERMAN);
modUser.commit();
modUser.save();
catch (Exception e) {
     response.write("<br>Problem setting language: "+e.getMessage());
     oksofar = false;
Any help would gratefully appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi Kai,
> when I have coded this before this has errored
Are you talking about the code snippet given? If yes, what kind of error?!?!
> when the user has no language populated I would like to set this to a default
If that what you want to try with the code snippet given? The snippet is (a) wrong and (b) strange:
a) Wrong. locale.getLanguage never returns "english" or "italian" or "geman"; it returns the language code (a lowercase ISO 639 code).
b) Strange. You want to check if it is set to "german" and then you set it to german?! Don't understand your logic...
You should also call save() first and then commit(); see http://help.sap.com/javadocs/nw04s/current/se/com/sap/security/api/IPrincipalMaint.html#save()
Also, keep in mind that you cannot change the locale of a user if this attribute would be mapped to some LDAP attribute and if the LDAP is connected read-only.
Hope it helps
Detlev