If like me, you are stuck with making a lot of code localizable, you have to go through all your php files and wrap all srings in _("string"). Here's an elisp function which can help you out.
This function enables you to highlight some text in an emacs buffer and make it a localizable string using the keyboard shortcut C-l (Ctrl and l). If the first character highlighted is " or ', then it assumes the text is in php-context and changes it to: _(HIGHLIGHTED_TEXT). Otherwise it assumes the text is in html-context and changes it to <?=_('HIGHLIGHTED_TEXT')?>
The shortcut C-k can be used for translating parts of php strings which contain html tabs. We dont want to translate the entire string including the tabs, so we highlight just the substring that needs to be translated and use C-k.
To use it, do either of:
Copy and paste the following code into your .emacs file. This would permanently associate the keyboard shortcut C-l with this function.
Save the code in a new file ending with the .el extension. Evaluate it using M-x eval-buffer. This makes the C-l keyboard shortcut only last for the current Emacs session.
Code
;author: Vinay Kuruvila March 01 2006
;updated to handle php strings containing html tabs
;makes the text starting at left and ending at right in the
;current buffer a localizable string, assuming that the
;string is within php context
(defun make-localizable-string-in-php-context(left right)
(goto-char left)
(insert "_(")
(goto-char (+ right 2))
(insert ")")
)
;makes the text starting at left and ending at right in the
;current buffer a localizable string, assuming that the
;string is within html context
(defun make-localizable-string-in-html-context(left right)
(goto-char left)
(insert "<?= _('")
(goto-char (+ right 7))
(insert "')?>")
)
;makes the highlighted text a localizable string
;uses php-context localization if the first char highlighted
;is " or '
;otherwise uses html-context localization
(defun make-localizable-string()
(interactive)
;find the positions of the left and right ends of
;the highlighted text
(if (> (point) (mark))
(progn
(setq right (point))
(setq left (mark))
)
(progn
(setq right (mark))
(setq left (point))
)
)
;determine php-context or html-context and dispatch
(if (or (char-equal (char-after left) ?\") (char-equal (char-after left) ?'))
(make-localizable-string-in-php-context left right)
(make-localizable-string-in-html-context left right)
)
(deactivate-mark)
)
;to handle php strings which contain html tabs
;we dont want to translate the html tabs
(defun make-localizable-string-within-php-string ()
(interactive)
;find the positions of the left and right ends of
;the highlighted text
(if (> (point) (mark))
(progn
(setq right (point))
(setq left (mark))
)
(progn
(setq right (mark))
(setq left (point))
)
)
(goto-char left)
(insert "\". _(\"")
(goto-char (+ right 6))
(insert "\").\"")
(deactivate-mark)
)
;assigns a keyboard shortcut
(global-set-key "\C-l" 'make-localizable-string)
(global-set-key "\C-k" 'make-localizable-string-within-php-string)
gettext
Description
string gettext ( string message )This function returns a translated string if one is found in the translation table, or the submitted message if not found. You may use the underscore character '_' as an alias to this function.
See also setlocale().
add a note
User Contributed Notes
vinaykuruvila at gmail dot com
04-Mar-2006 06:55
04-Mar-2006 06:55
daevid at daevid dot com
19-Jan-2006 11:51
19-Jan-2006 11:51
It appears that this version of gettext() is lame and doesn't support [_1] and [_2] ... modifier/parameters.
Here is a little hack around this:
<?php
function translate($string)
{
$arg = array();
for($i = 1 ; $i < func_num_args(); $i++)
$arg[] = func_get_arg($i);
return vsprintf(gettext($string), $arg);
}
$foo = 'Foo';
print translate("Found %1\$s Devices on Range %2\$s", "20", $foo)."<P>\n";
?>
To clarify, you'd put this string in your .po file:
"Found %1\$s Devices on Range %2\$s"
suchy(d)ivan(a)gmail.com
10-Dec-2005 08:35
10-Dec-2005 08:35
Default behavior is name .mo file equally in every language version:
===
locale_dir
--- en_US
------ LC_MESSAGES
--------- lang.mo
--- sk_SK
------ LC_MESSAGES
--------- lang.mo
===
I think, better form is:
===
locale_dir
--- en_US
------ LC_MESSAGES
--------- en.mo
--- sk_SK
------ LC_MESSAGES
--------- sk.mo
===
Then the following code works very well (surprisingly on win32 too), and you don't need restart apache and do other confusing things:
$gettext_domain = 'sk'; // change by language
setlocale(LC_ALL, 'sk_SK.UTF-8'); // change by language, directory name sk_SK, not sk_SK.UTF-8
bindtextdomain($gettext_domain, "lang");
textdomain($gettext_domain);
bind_textdomain_codeset($gettext_domain, 'UTF-8');
Have nice day :-)
smerf(a)druid(d)if(d)uj(d)edu(d)pl
31-Oct-2005 05:38
31-Oct-2005 05:38
Gettext translations are cached. If you change *.mo files your page may not be translated as expected. Here's simple workaround which does not require restarting webserver (I know, this is just a dirty hack):
<?php
function initialize_i18n($locale) {
putenv('LANG='.$locale);
setlocale(LC_ALL,"");
setlocale(LC_MESSAGES,$locale);
setlocale(LC_CTYPE,$locale);
$domains = glob($locales_root.'/'.$locale.'/LC_MESSAGES/messages-*.mo');
$current = basename($domains[0],'.mo');
$timestamp = preg_replace('{messages-}i','',$current);
bindtextdomain($current,$locales_root);
textdomain($current);
}
?>
to make this work you have to put your locale inside file messages-[unix_time].mo and use this name (without .mo) as your domain to fool caching mechanism (domain names differ)
msgfmt messages.po -o messages-`date +%s`.mo
for me this works fine (although this is not very elegant solution)
florent at eledo dot com
30-Aug-2005 10:05
30-Aug-2005 10:05
Take care when extracting the strings from the source files : if your source files are not encoded in ascii, then xgettext must be used with the --from-code option, and the generated .po file is *always* UTF-8 (even if you used a different --from-code charset).
The usage of gettext will not work later on strings which include non ascii caracters. For make it working, you have to translate the .po file to your proper charset with msgconv.
Example :
my source files are encoded in iso-8859-1
$ xgettext --from-code=iso-8859-1 -n *.php -o myapp.po
==> myapp.po is in UTF-8 (and generated .mo files will not work with gettext).
I have to convert it to iso-8859-1 before translating :
$ msgconv --to-code=iso-8859-1 myapp.po -o myapp.po
...and now translate the file.
niels at monarch dot de
16-Mar-2005 09:17
16-Mar-2005 09:17
mike-php at emerge2 dot com:
If you don't restart the webserver when messing with the .mo-files can cause in-traceable errors and can let the webserver become very unstable.
You alway want to restart your apache if you copy, move, create or modify your .mo-files! This is very important.
mike-php at emerge2 dot com
01-Mar-2005 05:45
01-Mar-2005 05:45
Re: adino at adino dot sk's note about re-starting Apache before it will recognize new .mo files.
I have found that for Red Hat, (as well as Windows NT and Windows 2000 under IIS,) this is not the case. I change .mo files all the time, and haven't had to restart the web server yet.
inode bei gmx punkt de
28-Aug-2004 05:46
28-Aug-2004 05:46
I use Debian and i don't know if it is obvious, but i noticed that the locale used by setenv() must also be installed in the System.
That means the .mo-Files in the ./locale Directory are not sufficient.
me at junglerat dot org
17-Jul-2003 02:24
17-Jul-2003 02:24
I experienced a problem with gettext(). After restarting apache it stopped translating. I found that setting both LC_ALL, LANG and LANGUAGE solved my problem with gettext() on a standard installation of Mandrake 9.0.
Example:
<?php
....
setlocale(LC_ALL,'en_US:en');
putenv('LANG=en_US:en');
putenv('LANGUAGE=en_US:en');
...
?>
adino at adino dot sk
20-May-2003 10:23
20-May-2003 10:23
If you 're experiencing problems like gettext() is not working and you're getting translated text only occassionaly use: unset LANG before starting apache.
Next thing is that you have to restart apache after you 've changed .mo files because they're treated something like shared libraries.
I've only tested this with Linux (Sourcemage Linux distro, Mandrake) but it might be true for others as well.
hardy at acm dot org
19-Mar-2003 01:12
19-Mar-2003 01:12
After many hours of tests/debug I found this behaviour in Red Hat 7.3 (I don't test with other versions/distros)
The i18n settings doesn't work if not exits the right country code under
/usr/lib/locale/. On my original instalation I just haved /usr/lib/locale/en* files, so after reinstall the glibc-common package the example showed here it works !.
* To force reinstall of the package
rpm -i --force glibc-common-2.2.5-34.i386.rpm
* The working example $HOME/i18n.php
----begin----
#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
// Current locale settings
echo "Current i18n:".setlocale(LC_ALL, 0)."\n\n";
// i18n support information here
$language = 'es_ES';
$newLocale=setlocale (LC_ALL, $language);
echo "After i18n:$newLocale\n\n";
// Set the text domain as 'messages'
$domain = 'messages';
bindtextdomain($domain, "./locale");
textdomain($domain);
echo gettext("The string must be here\n");
?>
----end----
* My $HOME/locale/es_ES/LC_MESSAGES/messages.po
----begin----
# SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE.
# Copyright (C) YEAR THE PACKAGE'S COPYRIGHT HOLDER
# This file is distributed under the same license as the PACKAGE package.
# FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR.
#
#, fuzzy
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Project-Id-Version: PACKAGE VERSION\n"
"POT-Creation-Date: 2003-03-18 10:52+0400\n"
"PO-Revision-Date: YEAR-MO-DA HO:MI+ZONE\n"
"Last-Translator: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>\n"
"Language-Team: LANGUAGE <LL@li.org>\n"
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
#: i18n.php:16
msgid "The string must be here\n"
msgstr "La cadena debe ir aqu\n"
----end----
I hope this helps to you
Thanks
Hardy Beltran Monasterios
jespersaNOSPAM at diku dot NO_SPAM dot dk
05-May-2002 08:27
05-May-2002 08:27
There's a good tutorial to the GetText tools used with PHP at http://zez.org/article/articleview/42
The only modification I needed to do was to use the correct ISO-language/country-codes (don't know the ISO number) and call setlocale.
helloworld.php:
putenv("LC_ALL=da_DK"); // For danish/Denmark
setlocale(LC_ALL, "");
// ./locale/da/LC_MESSAGES holds the helloworld.mo file
bindtextdomain("helloworld", "./locale");
textdomain("helloworld");
print(gettext("Hello world!"));
I had a lot of trouble getting this to work on Red Hat (Yellow Dog) Linux though.
nemo at o-k-j dot de
19-Dec-2001 06:32
19-Dec-2001 06:32
If you have problem to get this working, like everybody,
try it with the long version of the language parameter:
putenv ("LANG=de_DE");
iguy at ionsphere dot org
05-Mar-2001 12:18
05-Mar-2001 12:18
Depending on the implementation of gettext used you might have to call the setlocale(LC_ALL, "") command.
So your example code would be
<br>
<?php
// Set language to German
putenv ("LANG=de");
// set the locale into the instance of gettext
setlocale(LC_ALL, "");
// Specify location of translation tables
bindtextdomain ("myPHPApp", "./locale");
// Choose domain
textdomain ("myPHPApp");
// Print a test message
print (gettext ("Welcome to My PHP Application"));
?>
NOTE: If setlocale returns NULL the LANG specified is invalid and "not supported".