Using <wicket:message> tag to produce partially formatted text - wicket

Question

I've read about wicket:message here, but can't seem to make it do everything I'd like.
Say I have a HTML page with <wicket:message key="text"/> and a properties file containing text=Blah blah: important point, foo bar. I'm wondering how to make part of the text bold (or apply arbitrary CSS to it), to achieve output like:
Blah blah: important point, foo bar
Note that none of this is actually dynamic, so I wouldn't want to do anything in Java, if that can be avoided.
I've tried nesting tags with something like the following, but no luck.
<wicket:message key="text">
<span class="bold"><wicket:message key="text2"/></span>
</wicket:message>
text=Blah blah: ${text2}, foo bar
text2=important point
Is this even possible in Wicket without 1) injecting the formatted part from Java side or 2) just splitting the text into (in this case) three different properties?

Answer 1

The easiest way is to put the tags inside your localization file:
text=Blah blah: <strong>text2</strong>, foo bar
You could also use a Label and a ResourceModel to replace it later:
text=Blah blah: [b]text2[/b], foo bar
And in your model getObject(), or in your Label:
string.replace("[b]", "<strong>");
string.replace("[/b]", "</strong>");
Or, even better, try to reuse a Markdown implementation in your Label.

Answer 2

I've managed to do this for my own application, albeit with a rather ugly hack. I did it by exposing a customized version of WicketMessageResolver.
Here's what to try:
Wholesale copy and paste org.apache.wicket.markup.resolver.WicketMessageResolver into your own class (say com.acme.CustomWicketMessageResolver) (the hack begins!)
Inside your CustomWicketMessageResolver change
WicketTagIdentifier.registerWellKnownTagName( "message" ); to something else like WicketTagIdentifier.registerWellKnownTagName( "msg" );.
Inside of
private void renderMessage(final MarkupStream markupStream, final ComponentTag openTag, final String key, final String value), you'll find the line getResponse().write( text );.
Immediately before that line you have the opportunity to screw around with the value of "text". There, I do something like text = MyLabelUtils.replaceWikiMarkup(text) which post-processes some wiki-like markup syntax used by the content authors for my application.
For example, I use this method to take a Label using a ResourceModel pointing to the key:
propertyKey=I found the answer on [acronym SO].
and a render it as
I found the answer on <acronym title="Stack Overflow">SO</acronym>.
and that method handles i18n and all that fun stuff.
You can, of course, extend that wiki syntax (or anything similar) to be as simple or complex as you'd need.
Note that you'll have to change <wicket:message key='foo'> to <wicket:msg key='foo> in all of your markup files (or at least in ones where you want this behaviour).
I'd obviously prefer a more standard way to customize the behaviour of the built-inwicket message resolver, but if you need this functionality in a pinch, like I did, this will work for now.
If you need something more standard, you could raise the issue on the Wicket mailing list. It's pretty good.

Answer 3

Starting from Wicket 1.4 you can nest components within a wicket:message element. For example:
<wicket:message key="myKey">
This text will be replaced with text from the properties file.
<span wicket:id="amount">[amount]</span>.
<a wicket:id="link">
<wicket:message key="linkText"/>
</a>
</wicket:message>
Then
myKey=Your balance is ${amount}. Click ${link} to view the details.
linkText=here
and
add(new Label("amount",new Model("$5.00")));
add(new BookmarkablePageLink("link",DetailsPage.class));
Results in:
Your balance is $5.00. Click here to view the details.
So maybe, nesting <wicket:message>s without a component could work as well. Not sure.
Source: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/WICKET/Wicket%27s+XHTML+tags#Wicket%27sXHTMLtags-Elementwicket%3Amessage