What's the best logic for switching language in Laravel?

Question

I\'m using Laravel localization to provide two different languages. I\'ve got all the path stuff set up, and mydomain.com/en/bla delivers English and stores the \'en\' sessi

Answer 1

What I'm doing consists of two steps: I'm creating a languages table which consists of these fields:

id | name | slug

which hold the data im gonna need for the languages for example

1 | greek | gr

2 | english | en

3 | deutch | de

The Language model I use in the code below refers to that table.

So, in my routes.php I have something like:

//get the first segment of the url
$slug = Request::segment(1);   
$requested_slug = "";

//I retrieve the recordset from the languages table that has as a slug the first url segment of request
$lang = Language::where('slug', '=', $slug)->first();

//if it's null, the language I will retrieve a new recordset with my default language
$lang ? $requested_slug = $slug :  $lang = Language::where('slug', '=', **mydefaultlanguage**')->first();

//I'm preparing the $routePrefix variable, which will help me with my forms
$requested_slug == ""? $routePrefix = "" : $routePrefix = $requested_slug.".";

//and I'm putting the data in the in the session
Session::put('lang_id', $lang->id);
Session::put('slug', $requested_slug);
Session::put('routePrefix', $routePrefix );
Session::put('lang', $lang->name);

And then I can write me routes using the requested slug as a prefix...

Route::group(array('prefix' =>  $requested_slug), function()
{
    Route::get('/', function () {
        return "the language here is gonna be: ".Session::get('lang');
    });

    Route::resource('posts', 'PostsController');
    Route::resource('albums', 'AlbumsController');
});

This works but this code will ask the database for the languages everytime the route changes in my app. I don't know how I could, and if I should, figure out a mechanism that detects if the route changes to another language.

Hope that helped.

Answer 2

I've been doing it like this:

$languages = Config::get('lang.languages'); //returns array('hrv', 'eng')

$locale = Request::segment(1); //fetches first URI segment

//for default language ('hrv') set $locale prefix to "", otherwise set it to lang prefix
if (in_array($locale, $languages) && $locale != 'hrv') {
    App::setLocale($locale);
} else {
    App::setLocale('hrv');
    $locale = null;
}

// "/" routes will be default language routes, and "/$prefix" routes will be routes for all other languages
Route::group(array('prefix' => $locale), function() {

    //my routes here

});

Source: http://forumsarchive.laravel.io/viewtopic.php?pid=35185#p35185