Category:Internationalization
[h1]Adding internationalization for views[/h1]
By extending the Controller it is possible to easily add multilingual support for your Controllers when calling views, the example described here allows urls to be used to identify the users language and is especially useful for views that have a large amount of static content which is language specific.
It works by identifying the language from the url and then when loading the view looks for a view with the language extension first and if it is not found then looks for the specified view for example:
http://www.example.com/it/... and looks for view_name_it.php then view_name.php
http://www.example.com/fr/... and looks for view_name_fr.php then view_name.php
http://www.example.com/fr/... and looks for view_name_de.php then view_name.php
This is achieved by calling $this->load_view instead of $this->load->view in your controller
The whole process takes four steps
1. Modify your config.php & .htaccess files
2. Add controller to manage langauge identification and load correct view
3. Add helper helper with similar functions to url_helper
4. Create multi-lingual views
1. Modify your config.php & routes.php files
Firstly add the following line to your config.php file
$config['lang_code'] = "en";
here i have specified english (en) as the default language code.
The set up the routes for the different language your application will support an example is shown below:
$route['it'] = "welcome";
$route['^it/(.+)$'] = "$1";
2. Add controller i18n to manage language loading of views
<?php if (!defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');
class i18n extends Controller {
var $lang_code;
// Change the values to obtain the languages your require
var $languages = array('english' => 'en',
'italian' => 'it',
'german' => 'de',
'french' => 'fr',
'spanish' => 'es',
'japanese' => 'jp',
);
/**
* i18n
*
* Identifies the user language and stores the correct code
*/
function i18n ()
{
parent::Controller();
$this->load->helper('url_i18n');
if ($this->uri->segment(1))
{
$this->lang_code = $this->_identify_language($this->uri->segment(1));
}
else
{
$this->lang_code = $this->config->item('lang_code');
}
}
/**
* Load View (same as $this->load->view()
*
* This function is used to load a "view" file. It has three parameters:
*
* 1. The name of the "view" file to be included.
* 2. An associative array of data to be extracted for use in the view.
* 3. TRUE/FALSE - whether to return the data or load it. In
* some cases it's advantageous to be able to return data so that
* a developer can process it in some way.
*
* @access public
* @param string
* @param array
* @param bool
* @return void
*/
function load_view($view, $vars = array(), $return = FALSE)
{
if (file_exists(APPPATH.'views/'.$view.'_'.$this->lang_code.EXT))
{
// Use language specific template
return $this->load->view($view.'_'.$this->lang_code, $vars, $return);
}
// Language specific template not found use default
return $this->load->view($view, $vars, $return);
}
/**
* @access private
* @param string
* @return void
*/
function _identify_language($str = '')
{
foreach($this->languages as $language => $code)
{
if ($str == $code)
return $code;
}
// Reach here and the default language is used (declared in config/config.php)
return $this->config->item('lang_code');
}
}
?>
3. Add url helper which can also manage different languages
This helper has identical functions to the CI url_helper but the language code is passed to ensure the correct urls are created. All the functions have the same name with _i18n appended on the end and the last parameter is the language code.
/**
* Site URL
*
* Create a local URL based on your basepath. Segments can be passed via the
* first parameter either as a string or an array.
*
* @access public
* @param string
* @return string
*/
function site_url_i18n($uri = '', $lang_code = '')
{
$CI =& get_instance();
if ($lang_code)
{
return $CI->config->site_url($lang_code.'/'.$uri);
}
else
{
return $CI->config->site_url($uri);
}
}
// ------------------------------------------------------------------------
/**
* Anchor Link
*
* Creates an anchor based on the local URL.
*
* @access public
* @param string the URL
* @param string the link title
* @param mixed any attributes
* @return string
*/
function anchor_i18n($uri = '', $title = '', $attributes = '', $lang_code = '')
{
if ( ! is_array($uri))
{
$site_url = ( ! preg_match('!^\w+://!i', $uri)) ? site_url_i18n($uri, $lang_code) : $uri;
}
else
{
$site_url = site_url_i18n($uri, $lang_code);
}
if ($title == '')
{
$title = $site_url;
}
if ($attributes == '')
{
$attributes = ' title="'.$title.'"';
}
else
{
$attributes = _parse_attributes_i18n($attributes);
}
return '';
}
if ( ! is_array($attributes))
{
$attributes = array();
}
foreach (array('width' => '800', 'height' => '600', 'scrollbars' => 'yes', 'status' => 'yes', 'resizable' => 'yes', 'screenx' => '0', 'screeny' => '0', ) as $key => $val)
{
$atts[$key] = ( ! isset($attributes[$key])) ? $val : $attributes[$key];
}
return "";
}
// ------------------------------------------------------------------------
/**
* Header Redirect
*
* Header redirect in two flavors
*
* @access public
* @param string the URL
* @param string the method: location or redirect
* @return string
*/
function redirect_i18n($uri = '', $method = 'location', $lang_code = '')
{
switch($method)
{
case 'refresh' : header("Refresh:0;url=".site_url_i18n($uri, $lang_code));
break;
default : header("location:".site_url_i18n($uri, $lang_code));
break;
}
exit;
}
/**
* Parse out the attributes
*
* Some of the functions use this
*
* @access private
* @param array
* @param bool
* @return string
*/
function _parse_attributes_i18n($attributes, $javascript = FALSE)
{
if (is_string($attributes))
{
return ($attributes != '') ? ' '.$attributes : '';
}
$att = '';
foreach ($attributes as $key => $val)
{
if ($javascript == TRUE)
{
$att .= $key . '=' . $val . ',';
}
else
{
$att .= ' ' . $key . '="' . $val . '"';
}
}
if ($javascript == TRUE AND $att != '')
{
$att = substr($att, 0, -1);
}
return $att;
}
4. Create your views
The views are stored together and each view has their code attached to the end .
default_view.php Default language view
default_view_es.php Spanish language view
default_view_fr.php French language view
Example controller
Here is an example controller whch, has only one view and function call.
It is important to note the call to load the view is $this->load_view(‘legal/copyright_view’, ‘’, true)) and not
$this->load->view(‘legal/copyright_view’, ‘’, true)). This change enables the correct view to be loaded
<?php if (!defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');
//Remember to include this
require_once('i18n.php');
class Legal extends i18n {
function Legal()
{
parent::i18n();
}
/**
* Display copyright
*/
function index()
{
$data['title'] = 'Copyright';
$this->load_view('legal/copyright_view', $data, true);
}
}