TY - GEN
T1 - Locating need-to-translate constant strings in web applications
AU - Wang, Xiaoyin
AU - Zhang, Lu
AU - Xie, Tao
AU - Mei, Hong
AU - Sun, Jiasu
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - Software internationalization aims to make software accessible and usable by users all over the world. For a Java application that does not consider internationalization at the beginning of its develop- ment stage, our previous work proposed an approach to locating need-to-translate constant strings in the Java code. However, when being applied on web applications, it can identify only constant strings that may go to the generated HTML texts, but cannot further distinguish constant strings visible at the browser side (need-to-translate) from other constant strings (not need-to-translate). In this paper, to address significant challenges in internationalizing web applications, we propose a novel approach to locating need-to-translate constant strings in web applications. Among those constant strings that may go to the generated HTML texts, our approach further distinguishes strings visible at the browser side from non-visible strings via a novel technique called flag propagation. We evaluated our approach on three real-world open source PHP-based web applications (in total near 17 KLOC): Squirrel Mail, Lime Survey, and Mrbs. The empirical results demonstrate that our approach accurately distinguishes visible strings from non-visible strings among all the constant strings that may go to the generated HTML texts, and is effective for locating need-to-translate constant strings in web applications.
AB - Software internationalization aims to make software accessible and usable by users all over the world. For a Java application that does not consider internationalization at the beginning of its develop- ment stage, our previous work proposed an approach to locating need-to-translate constant strings in the Java code. However, when being applied on web applications, it can identify only constant strings that may go to the generated HTML texts, but cannot further distinguish constant strings visible at the browser side (need-to-translate) from other constant strings (not need-to-translate). In this paper, to address significant challenges in internationalizing web applications, we propose a novel approach to locating need-to-translate constant strings in web applications. Among those constant strings that may go to the generated HTML texts, our approach further distinguishes strings visible at the browser side from non-visible strings via a novel technique called flag propagation. We evaluated our approach on three real-world open source PHP-based web applications (in total near 17 KLOC): Squirrel Mail, Lime Survey, and Mrbs. The empirical results demonstrate that our approach accurately distinguishes visible strings from non-visible strings among all the constant strings that may go to the generated HTML texts, and is effective for locating need-to-translate constant strings in web applications.
KW - flag propagation
KW - software internationalization
KW - web application
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=78751530235&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=78751530235&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/1882291.1882306
DO - 10.1145/1882291.1882306
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:78751530235
SN - 9781605587912
T3 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering
SP - 87
EP - 96
BT - Proceedings of the 18th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering, FSE-18
T2 - 18th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, FSE-18
Y2 - 7 November 2010 through 11 November 2010
ER -