I have an existing multi-lingual Django app that I\'m porting to Django 1.4. I18n support is currently based on some ugly hacks, I\'d like to make it use Django\'s built-in
I used solid-i18n-url to solve similar problem: https://github.com/st4lk/django-solid-i18n-urls
Nice description how it works located here: http://www.lexev.org/en/2013/multilanguage-site-django-without-redirects/
UPDATE: Read answer bellow, Django 1.10 supports it natively
I faced this problem and solved this way:
Created an alternative i18n_patterns
that do not prefix the site main language (defined in settings.LANGUAGE_CODE
).
Created an alternative middleware that only uses the URL prefixes language to activate the current language.
I didn't see any side-effect using this technique.
The code:
# coding: utf-8
"""
Cauê Thenório - cauelt(at)gmail.com
This snippet makes Django do not create URL languages prefix (i.e. /en/)
for the default language (settings.LANGUAGE_CODE).
It also provides a middleware that activates the language based only on the URL.
This middleware ignores user session data, cookie and 'Accept-Language' HTTP header.
Your urls will be like:
In your default language (english in example):
/contact
/news
/articles
In another languages (portuguese in example):
/pt/contato
/pt/noticias
/pt/artigos
To use it, use the 'simple_i18n_patterns' instead the 'i18n_patterns'
in your urls.py:
from this_sinppet import simple_i18n_patterns as i18n_patterns
And use the 'SimpleLocaleMiddleware' instead the Django's 'LocaleMiddleware'
in your settings.py:
MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
...
'this_snippet.SimpleLocaleMiddleware'
...
)
Works on Django >=1.4
"""
import re
from django.conf import settings
from django.conf.urls import patterns
from django.core.urlresolvers import LocaleRegexURLResolver
from django.middleware.locale import LocaleMiddleware
from django.utils.translation import get_language, get_language_from_path
from django.utils import translation
class SimpleLocaleMiddleware(LocaleMiddleware):
def process_request(self, request):
if self.is_language_prefix_patterns_used():
lang_code = (get_language_from_path(request.path_info) or
settings.LANGUAGE_CODE)
translation.activate(lang_code)
request.LANGUAGE_CODE = translation.get_language()
class NoPrefixLocaleRegexURLResolver(LocaleRegexURLResolver):
@property
def regex(self):
language_code = get_language()
if language_code not in self._regex_dict:
regex_compiled = (re.compile('', re.UNICODE)
if language_code == settings.LANGUAGE_CODE
else re.compile('^%s/' % language_code, re.UNICODE))
self._regex_dict[language_code] = regex_compiled
return self._regex_dict[language_code]
def simple_i18n_patterns(prefix, *args):
"""
Adds the language code prefix to every URL pattern within this
function, when the language not is the main language.
This may only be used in the root URLconf, not in an included URLconf.
"""
pattern_list = patterns(prefix, *args)
if not settings.USE_I18N:
return pattern_list
return [NoPrefixLocaleRegexURLResolver(pattern_list)]
The code above is available on: https://gist.github.com/cauethenorio/4948177
Django 1.10 supports it natively. As they say in the doc:
i18n_patterns(*urls, prefix_default_language=True)
This function can be used in a root URLconf and Django will automatically prepend the current active language code to all url patterns defined within
i18n_patterns()
.Setting prefix_default_language to False removes the prefix from the default language (
LANGUAGE_CODE
). This can be useful when adding translations to existing site so that the current URLs won’t change.
Source: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/topics/i18n/translation/#language-prefix-in-url-patterns