Assists in loading messages for your plugin. Inspired by ProjectInfinity's version for ReportRTS, but made to be instantiated.

MessageAssist.java

package com.futuredev.tracker.util.msg;

import org.bukkit.ChatColor;
import org.bukkit.configuration.file.FileConfiguration;
import org.bukkit.configuration.file.YamlConfiguration;
import org.bukkit.plugin.java.JavaPlugin;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.text.MessageFormat;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Set;

// Represents a messages map.
// Inspired by ProjectInfinity's message reader, but designed to be instantiable to a plugin.
public class MessageAssist {

    File messageFile;
    JavaPlugin plugin;
    String fileName;
    FileConfiguration fileConfig;
    Map<String, String> messageMap = new HashMap<String, String>();

    public MessageAssist (JavaPlugin plugin, String fileName) {

        this.plugin   = plugin;
        this.fileName = fileName + ".yml";
        messageFile   = new File(this.plugin.getDataFolder(), fileName);
        messageMap    = setupMessageMap();

    }

    public void reload () {
        InputStream inputStream = plugin.getResource(fileName);
        if (inputStream != null) {
            YamlConfiguration config = YamlConfiguration.loadConfiguration(inputStream);
            fileConfig.setDefaults(config);
        }
    }

    public Map<String, String> setupMessageMap () {
        Set<String> messages = fileConfig.getKeys(true);
        for (String s : messages) {
            messageMap.put(s, fileConfig.getString(s));
      } return messageMap;
    }

    public String read (String str, Object ... variables) {
        Object obj = messageMap.get(str);
        if (obj == null || !(obj instanceof String)) {
            if (!fileConfig.getDefaults().contains(str)) {
                return ChatColor.RED + "Unable to find a value for " + str + ".";
          } messageMap.put(str, fileConfig.getDefaults().getString(str));
            fileConfig.set(str, fileConfig.getDefaults().getString(str));
            obj = fileConfig.getDefaults().getString(str);

      } String msg = (String) obj;
        msg = MessageFormat.format(msg, variables);
        return transformMessage(msg, true, true, false);
    }

    public boolean messageExists (String str) {
        return messageMap.get(str) != null;
    }

    public String parseChatColours (String msg) {
        for(ChatColor colour : ChatColor.values()){
            msg = msg.replaceAll("&" + colour.getChar(), colour.toString());
      } return msg;
    }

    public String stripColour (String msg) {
        for(ChatColor colour : ChatColor.values()){
            msg = msg.replaceAll("&" + colour.getChar(), "");
      } return msg;
    }

    public String transformMessage (String msg, boolean newLine, boolean colours, boolean strip) {
        msg = (strip ? stripColour(msg) : msg);
        msg = (newLine ? msg.replaceAll("$n", "\n") : msg);
        msg = (colours ? parseChatColours(msg) : msg);

        return msg;
    }

}