My multilingual website with only basic php (without zend_translate, gettext, etc…) will I have problems in the future?

Question

I tried gettext, but my free hosting doesn't allow it. I thought about Zend_translate, but I didn't want to use elements from frameworks since my page is mostly static.

So, I ended up with this tutorial:

http://www.bitrepository.com/php-how-to-add-multi-language-support-to-a-website.html

Where the author only use basic php (not sure), and it seems to work, but I'm not quite sure if it a good (or common) practice or if it can cause me problems in the future (adding and deleting bunch of code).

Here it is:

common.php:

<?php
session_start();
header('Cache-control: private'); // IE 6 FIX

if(isSet($_GET['lang']))
{
$lang = $_GET['lang'];

// register the session and set the cookie
$_SESSION['lang'] = $lang;

setcookie("lang", $lang, time() + (3600 * 24 * 30));
}
else if(isSet($_SESSION['lang']))
{
$lang = $_SESSION['lang'];
}
else if(isSet($_COOKIE['lang']))
{
$lang = $_COOKIE['lang'];
}
else
{
$lang = 'en';
}

switch ($lang) {
  case 'en':
  $lang_file = 'lang.en.php';
  break;

  case 'de':
  $lang_file = 'lang.es.php';
  break;

  default:
  $lang_file = 'lang.en.php';

}

include_once 'languages/'.$lang_file;
?>

languages/lang.en.php:

<?php
/* 
-----------------
Language: English
-----------------
*/

define('GREETING, Hello World');
?>

languages/lang.es.php:

<?php
/* 
-----------------
Language: Espanol
-----------------
*/

define('GREETING, Hola Mundo');
?>

index.php:

include_once 'common.php';
<p><?php echo LANG_TEST; ?></p>

So, if I want to change it to Spanish I just add: ?lang=es in the URL (after index.php)

Answer 1

First off all, it will not work with your code. You would have to use

define('GREETING', 'Hello World').

Check the PHP manual for define.

Second, using contants for this is a horrible idea. You are littering the global namespace with tons of constants and risk constant nameclashing. See the Userland Naming Guide.

If you do not want to use Zend_Translate (you don't have to use the entire framework for this) and cannot use gettext, I suggest you use arrays for storing the translations, e.g. something like this:

$lang = array(
    'greeting'  => 'Hello World'
    'something' => 'else'
);

and then you can use it like this in your template:

<h1><?php echo $lang['greeting'] ?></h1>

This way, you only have to make sure, $lang is not already defined in the global scope.

Some people prefer to use the default language instead of translation ids, e.g. they prefer to write

<h1><?php echo t('Hello World') ?></h1>

where t would function mapping the input string to the output string. The translation array would have to contain the full sentences then and map these to the other languages, e.g.

$lang = array(
    'Hello World' => 'Hola Mundo'
);

But of course, you could just access this with $lang['Hello World'] as well. It just gets awkward for long strings. Many translation functions allow you to pass in additional params though, to allow for something like this:

$lang = array(
    'currentTime' => 'The current time is %s'
);

<h1><?php echo t('currentTime', date('H:i:s')) ?></h1>