Display keys best practices

A display key represents a single piece of user-viewable text. A display key comprises:

  • A name to use in PCF files and Gosu code, where you want to display textual information
  • A text value to display in place of the name, for each locale installed in your PolicyCenter instance

As a best practice, Guidewire recommends that you edit your display key definitions by using the Display Keys editor in Guidewire Studio.

See also

Use display keys to display text

Define display keys for any text that you display to users through the PolicyCenter user interface or in log messages. Do not use hard-coded String literals. Display keys help you localize your configuration of PolicyCenter with translations for specific languages.

Use existing display keys whenever possible

Before you create a new display key, search the existing display keys to find one with the text that you want. In Guidewire Studio, open the display_localeCode.properties file for the language you are using. Then, type the word or phrase you want. The Display Keys editor navigates to and highlights display keys that contain the text or phrase in their names or values.

Observe display key naming conventions

Generally, display key names begin with a capital letter. Internal capitalization separates words in compound display key names. For example:

ContactDetail

PolicyCenter represents display keys in a hierarchical name space. A period (.) separates display key names in the paths of the display key hierarchy. For example:

Validation.Contact.ContactDetail

Generally, you specify text values for display key names that are leaves on the display keys resource tree. Generally, you do not specify text values for display key names that are parts of the path to a leaf display key. In the preceding example, the display keys Validation and Validation.Contact have no text values, because they are parts of a display key path. The display key ContactDetail has a text value, “Contact Detail”, because it is a leaf display key with no child display keys beyond it.

Add a suffix to new display keys to avoid name conflicts

To avoid future naming conflicts when Guidewire adds or changes base display keys, append the suffix _Ext to your new display key names.

For example, your PolicyCenter instance has a branch of the display key hierarchy for text that relates to contact validation. 

Validation.Contact.ContactDetail
Validation.Contact.NewContact

You want to add a display key for the text “Delete Contact”. Add a new display key named DeleteContact_Ext. 

Validation.Contact.ContactDetail
Validation.Contact.DeleteContact_Ext
Validation.Contact.NewContact

You can change the text for base display keys to change the text that the base configuration of the application displays. Guidewire recommends that you use the base configuration display keys for this purpose so the base configuration PCF files can just make use of the new values. If you add display keys with the suffix _Ext with the intention of using them in the base configuration, the base configuration PCF files must be altered to use them.

Organize display keys by page configuration component

Guidewire recommends that you organize display keys under paths specific to the page configuration component types and PCF file names where the text values of display keys appears. For example,

LV.Activity.Activities.DueDate