Building Multilingual sites with MidCOM
added:midgard-1.8.1 added:midcom-2.7.0 multilang
Multilang
With MidCOM 2.7+ and Midgard 1.8.1+ the recommended way is to use multilang (multilanguage) feature even if the site structure isn't identical among different languages.
If content hasn't been translated will master language (language 0) be used.
Using multilang
mgd_set_lang(int language)
Languages are called with their ID. E.g. mgd_set_lang(38) would set the language to English and mgd_set_lang(183) to Inuktitut.
For the master language key 0 (zero) is used. Master language isn't fixed to any specific language, so it can be the main language, which other languages will be translated from.
Get the currently used languages
It is possible to use two languages simultaneously
- Content language
- Interface language
To get the content language use
<?php
// Get ID (integer) of the content language
$content_language = $_MIDCOM->i18n->get_content_language();
?>
And for the currently used interface language (e.g. toolbar) use
<?php
// Get ID (integer) of the current interface language
$interface_language = $_MIDCOM->i18n->get_current_language();
?>
Using parameters as storage location
To use multilanguage parameters with midcom.helper.datamanager2 it is possible to set the parameter storage location in the following way:
'price' => array
(
'title' => 'price',
'type' => 'text',
'storage' => array
(
'location' => 'parameter',
'multilang' => true,
),
'widget' => 'text',
),
This will save the parameters
- midcom.helper.datamanager2, price, $value for the master language content
- midcom.helper.datamanager2, price_fi, $value for Finnish language content
Untranslated content
Component fi.protie.navigation will natively add class untranslated for content which is lacking the translation.
Otherwise untranslated content should be checked with
<?php
if ($object->lang !== $_MIDCOM->i18n->get_midgard_language())
?>
Hiding untranslated content
To hide untranslated content (otherwise master language will be displayed, resulting in displaying mixed language) set the MidCOM configuration parameter
$GLOBALS['midcom_config_local']['i18n_multilang_strict'] = true;
before initializing MidCOM in code-init.
Language versions for the requested object
To get a list of the language versions for a requested object do the following
MidCOM component level
<?php
// Get the metadata for the requested object
$object_metadata = midcom_helper_metadata::retrieve($object);
if ( $object_metadata
&& $object_metadata->id)
{
$languages = $object_metadata->get_languages();
}
// returns an array with the languages
?>
On layout level
<?php
// Get the metadata binded to the object currently viewed
// if the component binds the metadata
$object_metadata = $_MIDCOM->metadata->get_view_metadata();
if ( $object_metadata
&& $object_metadata->id)
{
$languages = $object_metadata->get_languages();
}
?>
Multilang and hosts
If host record has language other than 0, mgd_set_lang is automatically initialized to set the correct language.
To fetch a list of all the languages hosts use get an array containing the host objects with
<?php
$hosts = $_MIDCOM->i18n->get_language_hosts();
// Returns an array of languages, indexed with the language id as
// the array key for each language
?>
MySQL and object level
Several objects have two different types of properties: shared and language-dependant. For example table article shares e.g. name and the language content is located in article_i, which contains title, abstract, content and such.
Languages are located in table midgard_language.
midgard_query_builder will automatically set language constraint when applicable.