get a 3 column table into an array

condoug

I have a table which contains language conversions. The structure of the table is currently as such:

ID | SECTION | ENGLISH | GERMAN | ITALIAN

Each row will contain data something like the following:

1 | About Us Page | Hello | Hallo | Ciao

And so on. The idea is that the hard coded labels of my site will change depending on where the user's IP address is located, I therefore change the lanaguage of my site.

My plan is to query this large table when the user firsts visits the site and store the values into one large session array that I can access anywhere on my site and pull out and display the correct label depending on which SECTION the user is currently looking at on my site.

So I need help with that very query!

What would be th ebest way to query and structure that array? I guess it would be a multidimensional array, where the field names ENGLISH, GERMAN, ITALIAN could be the main KEYS and these contain sub arrays?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Doug

dalecosp

condoug;11025735 wrote:
The idea is that the hard coded labels of my site will change depending on where the user's IP address is located, I therefore change the lanaguage of my site.

Ooh ... why not just let the user pick their language?

As for the rest, sounds like you're on the right track. One approach I've seen is to keep a $lang variable someplace ($_SESSION, maybe) and query the database for each page load to get the labels/message in that $lang. Of course, I've sen that done pretty badly, too --- it would seem to me that if you could say which labels you're going to use, you'd be better off than to query and return the entire language table... but that's not how some have done it. 😉

Weedpacket

dalecosp wrote:
Ooh ... why not just let the user pick their language?

And if they haven't said what their preference is, find out what their browser recommends?

you'd be better off than to query and return the entire language table...

Seeing as in that case the whole store-it-in-the-database-and-query step becomes redundant and you might as well store the language data in a plain file.

dalecosp

Weedpacket;11025769 wrote:
And if they haven't said what their preference is, find out what their browser recommends?

Sounds a good idea.

Seeing as in that case the whole store-it-in-the-database-and-query step becomes redundant and you might as well store the language data in a plain file.

Well, I was tempted to say that configuration would still be easier with the DB, but you do have a good point. 😉

Weedpacket

dalecosp wrote:
Well, I was tempted to say that configuration would still be easier with the DB, but you do have a good point.

As I you; it would still be redundant to read the whole file into memory just for the sake of one language.

In fact, I think this could be the sort of situation where a SQLite database file would be effective; store the whole Rosetta (there's a proper word for it which escapes me for the moment) in one of those and then it would be straightforward to read a full lexicon for just the language that's actually to be used and cache it in the session as a plain associative array.

condoug

Thanks for the advice guys.

I really need to stick with a simple one off query of the database and store the labels into a session approach at this point, as do I need to maintain the IP detection (which is apready part of the site today). My site is a stpe by step booking wizard and there maybe upto 50 label translatings for each page. I'd rather just store all the labels for that correct language into a session and then display the session values accordingly rather than doing queries to the database for each label/page.

Therefore, can I ask, if the language was GERMAN, what would your query and session array structure look like?

Weedpacket

What's more important is what your query and session array structure would look like. You need to explain what 'ID' and 'SECTION' are for, and how you plan on identifying which label to use in any given instance. That would help in designing a data structure that meets your needs.
But to get just all of the the IDs and German text:

SELECT ID, GERMAN FROM TheTable

And the array that gets stored in the session would use the ID for the keys and the GERMAN text for the values.