EasyMultiLanguage ¶

1. Intro
2. How the hell it works ?
3. Installation
4. Usage
5. Perfomance

This crazy stuff helps you to implement mulitlanguage to your application almost without code modifications and pain in the ass. Sit back, relax and enjoy. The magic begins.

Gitlab link

Intro ¶

Imagine that you have a huuuuge application with a lot of logic and views. And one day you need to implement multilanguage system to your existing models. Do you wanna some candy behavior that do all magic ? Welcome my little fella, this is what you need.

How the hell it works ? ¶

This behavor replace all desired attributes with current language translations. (Except admin routes, where you need all languages as they are, for editing)

Let's say you have default language "ru". And you have this book:

$book->name = "Снег";
$book->name_en = "Snow"; // name_en automatically added by behavior

Now if you'll change language to "en", You book will looks like this:

$book->name = "Snow";
$book->name_en = "Snow"; // name_en automatically added by behavior

Installation ¶

1) Put this piece of happines in your extensions folder ¶

2) Database ¶

Import "EasyMultiLanguage/data/translations.sql"

3) In your config ¶

...

        'import'=>array(
                ...
                'ext.EasyMultiLanguage.*',
                ...
        ),

        ...

        'urlManager'=>array(

                'class'=>'EMUrlManager', // <---- You need this line, but other lines might save you too

                'showScriptName'=>false,
                'urlFormat'=>'path',
                'rules'=>array(

                        '<_c:\w+>/<id:\d+>'=>'<_c>/view',
                        '<_c:\w+>/<_a:\w+>/<id:\d+>'=>'<_c>/<_a>',
                        '<_c:\w+>/<_a:\w+>'=>'<_c>/<_a>',

                        '<_m:\w+>/<_c:\w+>/<_a:\w+>'=>'<_m>/<_c>/<_a>',
                        '<_m:\w+>/<_c:\w+>/<_a:\w+>/<id:\d+>'=>'<_m>/<_c>/<_a>',
                ),
        ),

        ...
        
	'params'=>array(
                'languages'=>array(
                        'ru' => 'Русский',
                        'en' => 'English',
                        'de' => 'Deutsche',
                ),
                'default_language' => 'ru',
	),

4) In your Model ¶

Lets say you have model Book with attributes name, author, description and status And you want to have name and description in English and Deutsche, while your default language is Russian

<?php
class Book extends CActiveRecord
{

        /**
         * __set 
         *
         * Rewrite default setter, so we can dynamically add
         * new virtual attribtues such as name_en, name_de etc.
         * 
         * @param string $name 
         * @param string $value 
         */
        public function __set($name, $value) 
        {
                if (EMHelper::WinnieThePooh($name, $this->behaviors()))
                        $this->{$name} = $value;
                else
                        parent::__set($name, $value);
        }


        /**
         * behaviors 
         * 
         * @return array
         */
        public function behaviors()
        {
                return array(
                        'EasyMultiLanguage'=>array(
                                 'class' => 'ext.EasyMultiLanguage.EasyMultiLanguageBehavior',
                                 'translated_attributes' => array('name', 'description'),
                                 'languages' => Yii::app()->params['languages'],
                                 'default_language' => Yii::app()->params['default_language'],
                                 'admin_routes' => array('book/admin', 'book/update', 'book/create'),
                                 'translations_table' => 'translations',
                        ),
                );
        }

        ....
}

5) In your base Controller ("/components/Controller.php") ¶

<?php
class Controller extends CController
{

        /**
         * init 
         * 
         * Something happening here 
         */
        public function init()
        {
                EMHelper::catchLanguage();

                parent::init();
        }

}

Usage ¶

1) In your view file ("views/book/_form") ¶

You need this only for editing form

You have new virtual attributes _nameen, _namede, _descriptionen, _descriptionde You can treat them as normal attributes.

Also nice Html helper is provided. It will create tab switcher between different language inputs.

There are 2 options:

• You have Twitter Bootstrap
• You don't have it

If you have Twitter Bootstrap

<?php echo EMHelper::megaOgogo($model, $attribute, $htmlOptions = array(), $fieldType = 'textField'); ?>

textField

<div class='control-group'>
                <?php echo $form->labelEx($model,'name', array('class'=>'control-label')); ?>
                <div class='controls'>
                        <?php echo EMHelper::megaOgogo($model, 'name', array('class'=>'span25')); ?>
                        <?php echo $form->error($model,'name'); ?>
                </div>
        </div>

textArea

<div class='control-group'>
                <?php echo $form->labelEx($model,'description', array('class'=>'control-label')); ?>
                <div class='controls'>
                        <?php echo EMHelper::megaOgogo($model, 'description', array('class'=>'span25', 'rows'=>7), 'textArea'); ?>
                        <?php echo $form->error($model,'description'); ?>
                </div>
        </div>

If you don't have Twitter Bootstrap

<?php echo EMHelper::multiInput($model, $attribute, $htmlOptions = array(), $fieldType = 'textField'); ?>

Like

<?php echo $form->labelEx($model,'name'); ?>
<?php echo EMHelper::multiInput($model, 'name'); ?>
<?php echo $form->error($model,'name'); ?>

2) Now put somewhere in main layout this LanguageSelectorWidget ¶

<?php $this->widget('ext.EasyMultiLanguage.widgets.LanguageSelectorWidget', array(
        'style'    => 'dropDown',  // "dropDown" or "inline". Optional. Default is "dropDown"
        'cssClass' => 'bla-bla',  // Optional. Additional css class for selector.
)); ?>

Perfomance ¶

In order to keep your perfomance bright and shiny, it's recommended to use different translation tables for different models if they have a lot of records. And if you know, that all attributes of your model will be varchar, then change value type from mediumtext to varchar in "translations" table

Congratulations ! Now you are awesome =) ¶