Load dynamically a language with translatable strings ?

[Doc]

Hi guys,

I was advised to ask that question here rather than in general, so here it is :

I detect the default language from the user browser. Let's say that user is not loggedin, I don't know anything about him.

I'd like to display the page in the language retrieved from the browser.

What I have now :

- a multi-language homepage : displaying french (the default language) if user goes to www.website.com/ or english if user goes to www.website.com/en

-> I'm using multi-language fields for that.

I'm able to use translatable strings also, such as :

echo __("My text to translate");

It works when I switch the url "/" to "/en" for example.

I'd like to do that without manual intervention :

- detect the browser's language

- load the right version of the homepage (User not loggedin, never seen him before scenario).

I know how to do it with multi-language :

$page->of(false); // turn off outputFormatting (if it's not already)
$lg_id = $languages->get('en'); // get the language we want
$body = $page->body->getLanguageValue($lg_id); // get the unformatted value in english

Is there a similar way to do it with translatable strings ?

Thanks

[LostKobrakai]

If you detect an user, who you want to see the english content, just redirect them to the www.website.com/en/. Everything will be automatically be translated on that page. You should almost never have to retrieve language values on your own besides in some edge cases.

[Doc]

Looks like a good idea but how to do that without falling into infinite redirect loops ?

I mean, I'm doing this check in the homepage, the one loaded by www.website.com/

Let's take the scenario where my default url, www.website.com/ is french.

A user comes in, english one, I detect english as its preferred language, he's not logged in. My code would be :

$lg = detect_lg(); // retrieve the browser's preference here

if((!$user->isLoggedin()) && ($lg != 'fr')) {
    $url = $page->httpUrl; // we now have 'http://www.website.com/' in $url
    $url .= 'en';                     // we now have 'http://www.website.com/en' in $url
    $session->redirect("$url"); // goes to http://www.website.com/en
}

So at the end of that code, we're going to http://www.website.com/en/ and my home.php will start again inside that same 'if', which will go to http://www.website.com/en/en and -> not found.

I can add something like '?redir=1' on the url uses by the first redirect so I can catch this later to avoid running one more time the 'if' block ?

Another solution would be to make the redirect on the homepage (home.php template), and that homepage will only do that, and then redirect to a children page such as www.website.com/en/welcome ?

What do you think ?

Edited January 22, 2017 by kongondo
Mod Note: Please use code blocks (see the <> icon), thanks.

[LostKobrakai]

I'd use a key in the session of the user or a cookie. The url option is also possible.

[Doc]

I'm speaking about a user who isn't logged in, so I suppose session can't work here ?

ok for cookies or url.

I've read other posts this afternoon and they confirmed it isn't very good to make a 301 or 302 as soon as you land on the homepage. So, for now, and only for the homepage, I've decided to use multi-language fields and I dynamically feed them with 'fr' or 'en' whatever the url is.

$page->of(false); // turn off outputFormatting (if it's not already)
$lg_id = $languages->get('en'); // get the language we want
$body = $page->body->getLanguageValue($lg_id); // get the unformatted value in english

That's many fields to add (30 maybe ?) but for now I'll go with that (on the homepage only).

I'll see if I need to hack this later. I plan to buy Ryan's profiler to see the bottlenecks when I will be live, maybe the homepage won't show up

[Doc]

I should add : thanks for all the help you brought me this week-end @LostKobrakai !

[LostKobrakai]

I'm not sure why a redirect should be bad. I mean lot's of pages to redirect to www.* pages or from http:// to https://, or from an old contents location to a new one. Also regarding the session: Everybody does get a session, which doesn't mean that all of them are actually logged in. 

[Doc]

Regarding the redirections, SEO purpose apparently, but I'm not expert in this. It also increases the loading time.

I didn't know for the sessions, I think I can use that unexpected feature, thanks

[LostKobrakai]

You could also simply add a notification on your homepage, where you suggest users an link to their browsers language instead of forcing a redirect on them. Then you'd only have to get a different language for the notification and everything else can stay automatically translated.

[Doc]

Another good suggestion, thanks.