Internationalization

Introduction

Glowie provides a very simple, yet powerful module to work with multilanguage applications. This is a static class called Babel.

Creating a language file

All your application language files should be stored in app/languages. Create a PHP file inside this folder with the name of the language you are using (example: en.php).

From Firefly CLI you can use the following command to create a new language file:

php firefly create-language --name=en

Inside this file you must return an associative array with your language strings and its keys.

Example

return [
    'welcome' => 'Welcome to my application',
    'error' => 'An error has ocurred'
];

Retrieving an internationalization string

You can retrieve an internationalization string from your controller, middleware, model or view by using Babel::get() function along with the string key and the language you want to use. If you do not specify the language, Babel will try to get the string from the current active language (see next).

If the key does not exists, this function returns null. If the language does not exist, Glowie will throw an exception.

Example

$welcome = Babel::get('welcome', 'en'); # returns "Welcome to my application"

Setting the active language

If you want to shorten the use of Babel::get() function, you can set a default language for retrieving internationalization strings.

Example

Babel::setActiveLanguage('pt'); # sets "pt" as the default language

All Babel::get() functions (those used without the second parameter) from this moment will use the language you defined.

To retrieve the current active language name, use Babel::getActiveLanguage().