Most efficient way to do language file in PHP?

Question

Questions Updated instead of making a new question...

I really want to provide a few alternative languages other then English on my social network s

Answer 1

why not you just make it as multi-dimesional array...such as this

<?php

$lang = array(
    'EN'=> array(
        'NO_PHOTO'=>'No photo\'s avaiable',
        'NEW_MEMBER'=>'This user is new',
    ),
    'MY'=> array(
        'NO_PHOTO'=>'Tiada gambar',
        'NEW_MEMBER'=>'Ini adalah pengguna baru',
    )
);

?>

Answer 2

An extension to the answers above whom deserve the credit - I'm just posting as maybe this will also be useful to someone else who ends up here.

I personally prefer the key to the array to be the actual phrase in my mother tongue (in my case English) rather than a CONSTANT_VALUE because:

• I find it easier to read the code when the text is in my native language rather than having to remember what a CONSTANT_VALUE actually outputs
• It means no lookup is needed to return the phrase for visitors who also use my naitive language (giving marginally better performance)
• It's one less list of values to maintain

The downside is that it's harder to spot missing values in other languages as you don't necessarily have a master list anymore - I also log a warning from the abstract method so that I spot any missing values.

I implemented as:

• An abstract class with static methods for outputting the text value (using late static binding)
• A concrete class for each language: English overriding the method to return the phrase without translation, other languages overriding the list of phrases so that a translated phrase is returned

    <?php
    namespace Language;

    abstract class _Language
    {
        protected static $displayText = array();

        public static function output($phrase){
            return static::$displayText[$phrase] ?? $phrase;
        }
    }

    <?php
    namespace Language;

    class English extends _Language
    {
        public static function output($phrase){
            return $phrase;
        }
    }

    <?php
    namespace Language;

    class Spanish extends _Language
    {
        protected static $displayText = array(
            'Forename' => 'Nombre',
            'Registered Email' => 'Correo electrónico registrado',
            'Surname' => 'Apellido'
        );
    }

Usage:

    $language = new \Language\Spanish();
    echo $language::output('Forename'); // Outputs: Nombre

    $language = new \Language\English();
    echo $language::output('Registered Email'); // Outputs: Registered Email

Answer 3

It'd probably be best to define a function that handles your language mapping. That way, if you do want to change how it works later, you're not forced to scour hundreds of scripts for cases where you used $lang[...] and replace them with something else.

Something like this would work and would be nice & fast:

function lang($phrase){
    static $lang = array(
        'NO_PHOTO' => 'No photo\'s available',
        'NEW_MEMBER' => 'This user is new'
    );
    return $lang[$phrase];
}

Make sure the array is declared static inside the function so it doesn't get reallocated each time the function is called. This is especially important when $lang is really large.

To use it:

echo lang('NO_PHOTO');

For handling multiple languages, just have this function defined in multiple files (like en.php, fr.php, etc) and require() the appropriate one for the user.

Answer 4

Unfortunately gettext not work good and have problems in various situation like on different OS (Windows or Linux) and make it work is very difficult.

In addition it require you set lot's of environment variables and domains and this not have any sense.

If a developer want simply get the translation of a text he should only set the .mo file path and get the translation with one function like translate("hello","en_EN"); With gettext this is not possible.

Answer 5

You can do this:

class T {
const language = "English";
const home = "Home";
const blog = "Blog";
const forum = "Forum";
const contact = "Support";
}

You would have a file like this for each language. To use the text:

There is no place like <?=T::home?>.

The downside is that if you add a new constant, you have to do it for every langauge file. If you forget one, your page breaks for that language. That is a bit nasty, but it is efficient since it doesn't need to create a large associative array and possibly the values even get inlined.

Maybe access could be improved, eg:

class T {
    const home = "home";

    public static function _ ($name) {
        $value = @constant("self::$name");
        return $value ? $value : $name;
    }

    // Or maybe through an instance:
    public function __get ($name) {
        $value = @constant("self::$name");
        return $value ? $value : $name;
    }
}
echo "There is no " . T::_("place") . " like " . T::_("home");
$T = new T();
echo "There is no " . $T->place . " like " . $T->home;

We still avoid the array and rely on constant to do the lookup, which I assume is more expensive than using the constants directly. The up side is the lookup can use a fallback when the key is not found.

Answer 6

This might work better:

function _L($phrase){
static $_L = array(
    'NO_PHOTO' => 'No photo\'s available',
    'NEW_MEMBER' => 'This user is new'
);

     return (!array_key_exists($phrase,$_L)) ? $phrase : $_L[$phrase];
}

Thats what i use for now. If the language is not found, it will return the phrase, instead of an error.

You should note that an array can contain no more than ~65500 items. Should be enough but well, just saying.

Here's some code that i use to check for the user's language:

<?php
function setSessionLanguageToDefault() {
    $ip=$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
    $url='http://api.hostip.info/get_html.php?ip='.$ip;
    $data=file_get_contents($url);
    $s=explode (':',$data);
    $s2=explode('(',$s[1]);

    $country=str_replace(')','',substr($s2[1], 0, 3));

    if ($country=='us') {
        $country='en';
    }

    $country=strtolower(ereg_replace("[^A-Za-z0-9]", "", $country ));
    $_SESSION["_LANGUAGE"]=$country;
}

if (!isset($_SESSION["_LANGUAGE"])) {
    setSessionLanguageToDefault();
}

if (file_exists(APP_DIR.'/language/'.$_SESSION["_LANGUAGE"].'.php')) {
    include(APP_DIR.'/language/'.$_SESSION["_LANGUAGE"].'.php');
} else {
    include(APP_DIR.'/language/'.DEFAULT_LANG.'.php');
}

?>

Its not done yet, but well i think this might help a lot.