What is the best place to keep messages displayed to users?

[simplyi]

Hi!

 

I am interested to hear your opinion about the best place to keep messages that are displayed to users. It is better to keep them in one place and in a separate file. But will it be a bad approach if I keep messages in an array inside a Class or it is better to keep them in a text file, token delimited and open and read this file every time I need a message?

 

What is your best practice?

 

Thank you!

 

class Messages
{
   static public $messages = array(
      "invalidLogin"  => "User name or password is not valid ",
      "welcome"       => "Welcome ",
      "requireEmailAddress" => "Please provide email address"
    );
}

[Buddski]

Having them in a class as you have done isnt a bad way to go.. It gives you the freedom to change 1 file and not hunt around if you need to make changes to your messages.

 

 

[laffin]

Only problem, is than the file becomes huge, and you will wasting memory on strings that arent on a particular page.

so you may opt for creating different page strings and a general strings.

[simplyi]

Thank you for your replies.

 

Yes I agree. For different set of messages different arrays can be created. One for Database error message, one User Parameters validation messages and etc. But I think that a .propertry text file is still a better approach... and it is less error prone to modify property file.