danielkulbe / internationalisation

Internationalisation for bolt

Internationalisation (i18n) for Bolt

There is no inbuild internationalisation in Bolt, so this is my attempt. What does this Extension do?

Change the locale variable in general configuration

We’re not really changing it, but we look in session / cookie and query or domain if an different localisation is requested and reboot the Application localisation (and the Controllers, because they might have dependencies).

Add a language switch menu

Yes, it’s essential - we want to make sure the user can switch the language. So I included a language menu, which can be styled on your templates need, by including your own _sub_langmenu.twig in your template.

Add international content fields

I iterate over the contenttypes.yml on Application bootstrap and add for each field that has the option i18n: true an other field for each enabled localisation (in the Extension’s config.yml) with a localisation identifer.

This will require a database check/update (in admin configuration menu) afterwards - so you should do this.

Twig functions and filters and other helpers

To handle multiligual content, I added some neat helpers.

First of all you should look in the included assets _sub_menu.twig, which includes some adjustments to handle multilingual menus. Menu changes are very basic: I just made it possible to have label['_ID'] and title['_ID'] options which will be used as soon as the global locale value (just the first two letter) matches the _ID value. If you use routes or paths to generate title and label of your menu items, the i18_menu() Twig function will be your friend. This works same as Bolt’s menu() function, but additionally takes care of localized title and subtitle.

To output the language switch menu use i18n_langmenu() Twig function in your template.

If you want to display a language name, i18n_lang filter and function will be helpful - just pass any locale identifer or leave blank to get the current language name.

But your best friends will be i18n_attribute Twig function and filter. They implement the basic attribute() functionality for Bolt Content, but will take care of localized values. By using this, you will prevent many if-clauses in your template. You still need to exclude localized fields in your template files, if you iterate over all possible fields.

This is no full solution, but will cover and solve 95% of the common problems that appear when you want to localize you Bolt installation.

Known issues

• There are still issues with forms. Sometimes it helped for me to just add the missing strings to the corresponding messages.yml. They show up as unused, by get used in correct place.
• You need to take care of dates on your own by using localdate('%c') and localdate('%x').
• Taxonomy is not localized. I still have now idea how to do it in an efficient way. May be you just want to translate the values in frontend by using {{ __(value) }}.
• To switch language in admin interface, you have to take a look at Extra menu item. There is currently no way to add menu items in a different location.