Fetching a variable from another document (Multi-Language Website), how to?

[Webase]

Hi,

I wish to do a multi-langague. I have this in my mind.
Lots of files for each language with $lang['vars'], but I have one problem. How can I make my functions get the $lang['var'] from a file?

Thanks!

[bradgrafelman]

Have one "language" file that does nothing but declare values for this $lang array. Then, use a function like [man]require_once/man to load it:

require_once 'lang/spanish.php';
echo $lang['greeting']; // ¡Bienvenido!

[Webase]

Hi, still I'd need to do the require_once inside each one of the functions, right? Or is there another way?

Just a little question can the functions load $_COOKIE info?

Thanks anyways.

[bradgrafelman]

What you'd do is use require_once() at the top of your page, and then inside functions you'd have to initialize the "global" variable $lang like so:

<?PHP
require_once 'langs/spanish.php';

function sayHello() {
     global $lang;

 echo $lang['greeting']; // ¡Bienvenido!
}

To answer your other question, at least what I believe is your question, yes. the $_COOKIE array is a superglobal array, meaning it can be accessed from any scope (inside functions, classes, etc.).

[Webase]

Right, but still I'd need to do global $lang inside each function, isn't there any other way?

I want to connect all functions in one class, but they're from different files, how can I make em all share $this info and the $lang?

And thanks again for the help!

[jdorsch]

Here is one way to do it, if you use objects it doesn't have to be exactly this, there are quite a few similar OOP mplementations, google for it

// in some config file setup your language

define( 'SITE_LANGUAGE', 'Japanese' ) ;


// Your language manager

class LanguageManager
{
    static $lang = null ;

   public static function getLang()
   {
      if( !self::$lang )
      {
          switch( SITE_LANGUAGE )
          {
             case 'japanese':
               require_once( 'JapaneseLanguage.php' ) ;
               self::$lang = new JapaneseLanguage() ;
             case 'spanish':
               require_once( 'SpanishLanguage.php' ) ;
               self::$lang = new SpanishLanguage() ;
          }
      }
      retrn self::$lang() ;
   }
}


// The following might be overkill, you could also just have getLang() return an 
//array, or have the class concrete language class be 
// composed of constants instead


// We use an interface to make sure all languages have all 
// the required functionality
interface Language
{
   public function greeting() ;
   public function goodbye() ;
   public function insult() ;
}


class JapaneseLanguage implements Language
{
   public function greeting()
   {
       return 'Konichiwa' ;
   }

   public function goodbye()
   {
      return 'whatever goodbye is in japanese' ;
   }
}

and this is how you would use it

define

function sayHello() {
     echo LanguageManager::getLang()->greeting() ;

// or
$lang = LanguageManager::getLang() ;
echo $lang->greeting() ;
}

If you put it in a class

class Thingy
{

   protected $lang ;

   public function __construct()
  {
     $this->lang = LanguageManager::getLang() ; 
  }

  public function SayHello()
  {
     echo $this->lang->greeting() ;
  }

}

[Weedpacket]

You could also give the [man]gettext[/man] extension a look.

Something similar could be done without the extension, though. Each string that has translations appears in the code as

_("Do you speak English?")

(instead of just "Do you speak English?"). Then the _() function (yes, "" is a valid function name) looks roughly like this:

function _($string)
{
    global $lang; // which has already been included
if(isset($lang[$string])) return $lang[$string];
else return $string; // use the original for a default.
}

In the example above, the German lang file would declare an array

$lang = array(
//....
"Do you speak English?" => "Sprechen Sie Englisch?"
//...
);