IN10 Multilanguage

Simple, opinionated multilanguage package for Laravel

Contents

• Requirements
• Design
• Installation
• Migrating from Arcanedev/localization
• Usage
• Developer
• License

Requirements

• PHP 7.1 - 7.3
• Laravel 5.7

Design

This is an opinionated package: it works in a specific way, based on the setups we run at IN10. That means:

1. All translated routes start with a route part, e.g. example.com/de/news/
2. A website has a pre-defined set of languages, all other languages return a 404.
3. A language is always two characters.
4. The homepage is translated.
5. The website has a single default language, by default "en" which you can change in the configuration. This default language is excluded from the URL via a 301-redirect. If you visit example.com/en/test, it will be redirected to example.com/test.

Installation

Install the package using composer:

composer require "in10/multilanguage"

and publish the configuration file:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider=IN10\\Multilanguage\\ServiceProvider

You can customize this file as needed.

Migrating from ARCANEDEV/localization

One of the packages we used to use at IN10 is ARCANEDEV/Localization. To facilitate an easy upgrade from the package to this new, smaller package, execute the following steps:

1. Remove the existing package: composer remove arcanedev/localization.
2. Remove the ServiceProvider and configuration file if needed.
3. Follow the steps in the Installation section above to install IN10/multilanguage.
4. Search through your project for the following instances of Localization-specific code that must be replaced

5. Test your project thoroughly to check if all translated routes and features still work.

Usage

Setting up groups

You can make a set of routes translated by wrapping them in a group:

Route::multilanguage([], function() {
    Route::get('/', 'HomepageController')->name('homepage');
    Route::get('/news/{slug}', 'HomepageController')->name('news.show');
});

The first parameter attributes takes the same settings as a regular route group, except for prefix, as and middleware, which are overwritten (these parameters are required to make the translation work). The multilanguage-group should be a root-level construct. Adding it inside of another group or prefix is not tested and probably won't work.

Route translation

In some cases, you might want to translate slugs in the URL. A common example is the /en/news/an-article and /nl/nieuws/een-artikel variants of URLs. This can be accomplished using the transGet routing function:

Route::multilanguage([], function() {
    Route::transGet('news.show');
});

Note that using transGet outside of a multilanguage routing group will not work.

The translation key is automatically looked up in the routes.php translation file. All translation routes must always be translated. Don't fret: the package will scream at you if you're missing a translation.

// resources/lang/en/routes.php
return [
    'news.show' => 'news/{slug}',
];

// resources/lang/nl/routes.php
return [
    'news.show' => 'nieuws/{slug}',
];

Route generation

If you want to generate a route with a correct language, use the included helper:

function translatedRoute(string $route, array $parameters = [], bool $absolute = true, ?string $language = null) : string

This helpers takes the same parameters as the Laravel route() helper, with an optional language as a last parameter. If you omit the language, the helper uses the current language for the request. This is usually what you want, so in general you can use the translatedRoute helper as if it were the regular helper:

translatedRoute('news.show', ['slug' => 'five-ways-to-translate-content');

which will generate /nl/news/five-ways-to-translate-content in this example if the current language is set to Dutch.

Developer

Jakob Buis

License

Copyright 2019 IN10. All rights reserved.