CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsinternationalization
happyfeet
happyfeet

Reputation: 133

Internationalization Best Practices / Rails App

I am new to ruby & rails and have started building an application.

My goal is to build this in a way I can easily translate the contents of the rails app and display the website contents in a locale preferred by registered user.

Appreciate any inputs on some of the best practices or references to any documentation to read, to build a web application that can be easily translated?

Thanks, Krish.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 4760

Answers (6)

gagan
gagan

Reputation: 191

Here are some tips or best practices I noted while working through Internationalization of a Rails app. (It's possible that some of them are now outdated).

Before I get into a list here's some clarification between localization and translation that was helpful to me:

Definitions:

App localization and model translations are separate concerns. Figure out which one of those (or both) it is, that you need.

The way I use them here:

  • App localization: Localization your app to a locale.

  • Model translation: Translation your model/data into a language.

Example: Give me the french translation (model translation) of the resource in my Spanish site (app localization)

I use Globalize for model translations.

Helpful Tips/ Best Practices:

Some of the following are clearly just helpful tips while working in the Context of Rails + Globalize, some of them might be more than that... possibly best practices.

  • I18n.locale refers to and sets the locale of the app. When using Globalize, Globalize.locale refers to and sets the locale for model/data translations.

  • Set both I18n.locale and Globalize.locale on every request. Since these variables are set in Thread, it will avoid some hard-to-replicate bugs.

  • Set Globalize.locale to I18n.locale right after setting I18n.locale. This allows for model translations to default to the locale of the app. (On my Spanish site, I expect data to be in Spanish, by default).

  • Change Globalize.locale (and notI18n.locale) to change model translation.

  • Reset I18n.locale and Globalize.locale after every test. In rspec

    RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.after(:each) do 
    I18n.locale = :en
    Globalize.locale = :en
  end
end

  • Either use subdomain, or subfolder in the url to refer to the locale of the app.

  • Use a language parameter to specify the language of the data.

  • When you work on your rails app, you will probably use default_url_options to use I18n.locale as the default locale parameter for your route / path helpers. However this doesn't work in tests. I picked up a solution from this github issue on rspec-rails.

    I monkey patch ActionDispatch::Routing::RouteSet like so: 

    class ActionDispatch::Routing::RouteSet
  def url_for_with_locale_fix(options={})
    url_for_without_locale_fix(options.merge(:locale => I18n.locale))
  end

  alias_method_chain :url_for, :locale_fix
end

  • Set up a translate helper t as a wrapper around the I18n.t method

    module I18nHelper
  def t string, options = {}
    I18n.t string, options
  end
end

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.include I18nHelper
end

Upvotes: 1

DeTeam
DeTeam

Reputation: 438

You'd definetely watch this talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTu4iHWGDyE

Upvotes: 1

Haris Krajina
Haris Krajina

Reputation: 15266

This is mini-pattern I use. You can check it out: http://developers-note.blogspot.com/2012/01/rails-i18n-good-practice.html

Upvotes: -1

Amar
Amar

Reputation: 6942

You can use ready_for_i18n plugin that convert your erb to desired form.It saves some time.

Upvotes: 3

Mirko
Mirko

Reputation: 5286

Also check out Globalize3, it became a standard for model translations. Very useful.

Upvotes: 3

idlefingers
idlefingers

Reputation: 32037

Check out the Rails Internationalization (I18n) API. It does everything you've described.

Upvotes: 4

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