Java Message Format Using Named Placeholder

The Java MessageFormat class allows user to pre-define a string with placeholders and then fill the placeholders with actual strings later to construct a proper message.

It's all fine if you're used to numbered placeholders e.g. {0} and {1}. Since I'm used to Drupal's format_string() function, here's a better alternative. Apache Commons has a StrSubstitutor class which allows use of named placeholders. Instead of using:

String template = "Welcome {0}!  Your last login was {1}";
String output = MessageFormat.format(template1, new Object[] { "gabe", new Date().toString() });

You can now do:

String template = "Welcome ${username}!  Your last login was ${lastlogin}";

Map data = new HashMap();
data.put("username", "gabe");
data.put("lastlogin", new Date().toString());
  
String output2 = StrSubstitutor.replace(template2, data);

Although StrSubstitutor is a bit more verbose, but it helps when you're handling lots of key/value pairs.