Method and system for generating and serving multilingual web pages

• US 20030005159A1
• Filed: 06/07/2001
• Published: 01/02/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 06/07/2001
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Kumhyr, David Bruce
• Application Number:
  US09/875,862
• Publication Number:
  US 20030005159A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/246
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking

Abstract

A method, a system, an apparatus, and a computer program product are presented for publishing multilingual content through a Web site using language-neutral Web pages. Instead of creating multiple, language-specific, Web pages for each Web page that contains content, a single, language-neutral, Web page is maintained, and the language-specific content strings for the language-neutral Web page are dynamically retrieved in accordance with the user'"'"'s selection of a preferred language, which can be received at a server supporting the Web site via a Web page request message from a client. The language-neutral Web page contains at least one content directive that identifies a content key. Using the content key and the user-specified language preference parameter, a content string is retrieved from a datastore and inserted into modified version of the language-neutral document, thereby generating a language-specific content stream.

Claims

1. A method for processing a document, the method comprising:

retrieving a document;

detecting a content directive within the document;

obtaining a content key from the content directive;

retrieving a content string associated with the content key from a datastore in accordance with a language preference parameter; and

replacing the content directive with the content string in a modified version of the document.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

sending the modified version of the document to a client.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

retrieving a datastore identifier from the content directive; and

selecting, in accordance with the datastore identifier, the datastore from which to retrieve the content string.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the retrieved document is a language-neutral document with respect to its content.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the modified version of the document is a language-specific document with respect to its content.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

receiving a request for the document from a client;

retrieving the language preference parameter from the request.

7. The method of claim 6 further comprising:

determining that the request is an HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol) request message;

parsing the HTTP request message for a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) that identifies the document.

8. The method of claim 7 further comprising:

sending the modified version of the document to a client in an HTTP response message.

9. An apparatus for processing a document, the apparatus comprising:

means for retrieving a document;

means for detecting a content directive within the document;

means for obtaining a content key from the content directive;

means for retrieving a content string associated with the content key from a datastore in accordance with a language preference parameter; and

means for replacing the content directive with the content string in a modified version of the document.

10. The apparatus of claim 9 further comprising:

means for sending the modified version of the document to a client.

11. The apparatus of claim 9 further comprising:

means for retrieving a datastore identifier from the content directive; and

means for selecting, in accordance with the datastore identifier, the datastore from which to retrieve the content string.

12. The apparatus of claim 9 wherein the retrieved document is a language-neutral document with respect to its content.

13. The apparatus of claim 9 wherein the modified version of the document is a language-specific document with respect to its content.

14. The apparatus of claim 9 further comprising:

means for receiving a request for the document from a client;

means for retrieving the language preference parameter from the request.

15. The apparatus of claim 14 further comprising:

means for determining that the request is an HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol) request message;

means for parsing the HTTP request message for a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) that identifies the document.

16. The apparatus of claim 15 further comprising:

means for sending the modified version of the document to a client in an HTTP response message.

18. The computer program product of claim 17 further comprising:

instructions for sending the modified version of the document to a client.

19. The computer program product of claim 17 further comprising:

instructions for retrieving a datastore identifier from the content directive; and

instructions for selecting, in accordance with the datastore identifier, the datastore from which to retrieve the content string.

20. The computer program product of claim 17 wherein the retrieved document is a language-neutral document with respect to its content.

21. The computer program product of claim 17 wherein the modified version of the document is a language-specific document with respect to its content.

22. The computer program product of claim 17 further comprising:

instructions for receiving a request for the document from a client;

instructions for retrieving the language preference parameter from the request.

23. The computer program product of claim 22 further comprising:

instructions for determining that the request is an HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol) request message;

instructions for parsing the HTTP request message for a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) that identifies the document.

24. The computer program product of claim 23 further comprising:

instructions for sending the modified version of the document to a client in an HTTP response message.

17. A computer program product on a computer readable medium for use in a data processing system for processing a document, the computer program product comprising:

instructions for retrieving a document;

instructions for detecting a content directive within the document;

instructions for obtaining a content key from the content directive;

instructions for retrieving a content string associated with the content key from a datastore in accordance with a language preference parameter; and

instructions for replacing the content directive with the content string in a modified version of the document.