Below you will find a description of the different source formats
which can be used with Zend_Translate
.
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Note that most of the described formats should be created by using a tool or a generation process. These Tools and processes are not part of Zend Framework and for most of the described formats free tools are available. |
Array source files are plain arrays. But you have to define them manually since there is no tool to aid this. But because they are so simple, it's the fastest way to look up messages if your code works as expected. It's generally the best adapter to get started with translation business.
$english = array( 'message1' => 'message1', 'message2' => 'message2', 'message3' => 'message3'); $german = array( 'message1' => 'Nachricht1', 'message2' => 'Nachricht2', 'message3' => 'Nachricht3'); $translate = new Zend_Translate('array', $english, 'en'); $translate->addTranslation($deutsch, 'de');
Since release 1.5 it is also supported to have arrays included within an external file.
You just have to provide the filename and Zend_Translate
will automatically
include it and look for the array. See the following example for details:
// myarray.php return array( 'message1' => 'Nachricht1', 'message2' => 'Nachricht2', 'message3' => 'Nachricht3'); // controller $translate = new Zend_Translate('array', '/path/to/myarray.php', 'de');
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Files which do not return an array will fail to be included. Also any output within this file will be ignored and suppressed. |
Gettext source files are created by GNU's gettext library. There are several free tools available that can parse your code files and create the needed gettext source files. These have the extension *.mo and they are binary files. An open source tool for creating the files is poEdit. This tool also supports you during the translation process itself.
// We accume that we have created the mo files and translated them $translate = new Zend_Translate('gettext', '/path/to/english.mo', 'en'); $translate->addTranslation('/path/to/german.mo', 'de');
As you can see the adapters are used exactly the same way, with one small difference: change array to gettext. All other usages are exactly the same as with all other adapters. With the gettext adapter you no longer have to be aware of gettext's standard directory structure, bindtextdomain and textdomain. Just give the path and filename to the adapter.
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You should always use UTF-8 as source encoding. Otherwise you will have problems when using two different source encodings. E.g. one of your source files is encoded with ISO-8815-11 and another one with CP815. You can set only one encoding for your source file, so one of your languages probably will not display correctly. UTF-8 is a portable format which supports all languages. When using UTF-8 for all languages, you will eliminate the problem of incompatible encodings. |
Many gettext editors add adapter informations as empty translation string.
This is the reason why empty strings are not translated when using the
gettext adapter. Instead they are erased from the translation table and
provided by the getAdapterInfo()
method. It will return
the adapter informations for all added gettext files as array using the
filename as key.
// Getting the adapter informations $translate = new Zend_Translate('gettext', '/path/to/english.mo', 'en'); print_r($translate->getAdapterInfo());
TMX source files are a new industry standard. They have the advantage of being XML files and so they are readable by every editor and of course by humans. You can either create TMX files manually with a text editor, or you can use a special tool. But most tools currently available for creating TMX source files are not freely available.
Example 57.3. Example TMX file
<?xml version="1.0" ?> <!DOCTYPE tmx SYSTEM "tmx14.dtd"> <tmx version="1.4"> <header creationtoolversion="1.0.0" datatype="winres" segtype="sentence" adminlang="en-us" srclang="de-at" o-tmf="abc" creationtool="XYZTool" > </header> <body> <tu tuid='message1'> <tuv xml:lang="de"><seg>Nachricht1</seg></tuv> <tuv xml:lang="en"><seg>message1</seg></tuv> </tu> <tu tuid='message2'> <tuv xml:lang="en"><seg>message2</seg></tuv> <tuv xml:lang="de"><seg>Nachricht2</seg></tuv> </tu>
$translate = new Zend_Translate('tmx', 'path/to/mytranslation.tmx', 'en');
TMX files can have several languages within the same file.
All other included languages are added automatically,
so you do not have to call addLanguage()
.
If you want to have only specified languages from the source translated
you can set the option 'defined_language
' to TRUE
.
With this option you can add the wished languages explicitly with
addLanguage()
. The default value for this option is to add all
languages.
CSV source files are small and human readable. If your customers want to translate their own, you will probably use the CSV adapter.
Example 57.4. Example CSV file
#Example csv file message1;Nachricht1 message2;Nachricht2
$translate = new Zend_Translate('csv', '/path/to/mytranslation.csv', 'de'); $translate->addTranslation('path/to/other.csv', 'fr');
There are three different options for the CSV adapter.
You can set 'delimiter
', 'limit
' and
'enclosure
'.
The default delimiter for CSV string is ';
', but
with the option 'delimiter
'
you can decide to use another one.
The default limit for a line within a CSV file is '0
'. This means
that the end of a CSV line is searched automatically. If you set
'limit
' to any value, then the CSV file will be
read faster, but any line exceeding this limit will be truncated.
The default enclosure to use for CSV files is '"
'. You can
set a different one using the option 'enclosure
'.
Example 57.5. Second CSV file example
# Example CSV file "message,1",Nachricht1 message2,"Nachricht,2" "message3,",Nachricht3
$translate = new Zend_Translate( 'csv', '/path/to/mytranslation.csv', 'de', array('delimiter' => ',')); $translate->addTranslation('/path/to/other.csv', 'fr');
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When you are using non-ASCII characters within your CSV file, like umlauts or UTF-8 chars, then you should always use enclosure. Omitting the enclosure can lead to missing characters in your translation. |
INI source files are human readable but normally not very small as they also include other data beside translations. If you have data which shall be editable by your customers you can use the INI adapter.
Example 57.6. Example INI file
[Test] ;TestPage Comment Message_1="Nachricht 1 (de)" Message_2="Nachricht 2 (de)" Message_3="Nachricht :3 (de)"
$translate = new Zend_Translate('ini', '/path/to/mytranslation.ini', 'de'); $translate->addTranslation('/path/to/other.ini', 'it');
INI files have several restrictions. If a value in the ini file contains any
non-alphanumeric characters it needs to be enclosed in double-quotes ("
).
There are also reserved words which must not be used as keys for ini files.
These include: NULL
, yes
, no
, TRUE
,
and FALSE
. Values NULL
, no
and FALSE
results
in ""
, yes
and TRUE
results in 1
. Characters {}|&~![()"
must not be used anywhere
in the key and have a special meaning in the value. Do not use them as it will
produce unexpected behaviour.