Internationalized h:selectOneMenu using a Enum

Using JSF2.0 it is now very easy to add internalionsed enums to your drop down (h:selectOneMenu) options. All you need to do is this:

<h:selectOneMenu id="colourSelect" value="#{colourController.colour}">
    <f:selectItems value="#{colourController.colours}"
                   var="colour"
                   itemValue="#{colour}"
                   itemLabel="#{enumBundle[colour.name()]}">
    </f:selectItems>
</h:selectOneMenu>

Simples! That may be enough for you to get going. Read on if you need more config info.

In faces config, add:

    <application>
        <resource-bundle>
            <base-name>/enumBundle</base-name>
            <var>enumBundle</var>
        </resource-bundle>
    </application>

Create a file '/src/main/resources/enumBundle.properties' (if using maven, otherwise place it in your default package) and add this to it:

RED=Colour Red
BLUE=Colour Blue
GREEN=Colour Green

Thats the resource bundle setup, now you just need the bean:

import java.io.Serializable;
import javax.enterprise.context.ConversationScoped;
import javax.inject.Named;


@ConversationScoped
@Named("colourController")
public class ColourController implements Serializable {

    public enum Colour {
        RED, BLUE, GREEN
    }
    
    public Colour[] getColours(){
        return Colour.values();
    }

    public void colour(Colour colour) {
        System.out.println("colour: '" + colour.name() + "' was selected.");
    }
}

You DO NOT need to write your own converter (I have seen this recommended elsewhere) as JSF has it's own built in converter. This is all you need to do. I wasted a couple of hours on this, hopefully saves someone out there some time, let me know!