Using translateable strings in external file always shows the default language

[Juergen]

Hello @ all

I am struggeling with this problem now for hours and I could not find a working solution.😔

Problem description:

I have a HTML file, which is a HTML template for an email - so it includes Markup, static texts and translateable strings. Lets assume that it would look like this:

mail-template.html

<p>My mail template</p>
<?php echo _('Hello user');?>

On another file, which should send the mail, I want to include this file to be the mail->body.

mail_sending.php

ob_start();
include('path/to/my/mail-template.html');
$body = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();

As you can see, the variable $body contains now my rendered HTML file - this works, but it does not take account of the user language. It always outputs the translateable strings in the default language.

I have not found a way to output it fe in German.

The goal:

I want to put the rendered content of the mail-template.html (including the correct translations of the text!) to PHP variable, so I can use it as the mail->body text.

$mail->bodyHTML($body);

The problem is, that ob_get_contents does not take account of the user language, even if I set it explicitely.

I have also tried it with file_get_contents, but in this case, I cannot get the rendered text.

Does anyone have an idea, how this could be done??

 

 

[gebeer]

Have you tried $body=$files->render('path/to/my/mail-template.html''); ?

Are your files namespaced?

[Juergen]

This is a good idea @gebeer

but unfortunately, I got the same result as using ob_get_contents. The translateable strings are not translated.😬

If I check the user language with Tracy bd() function, I always get that the user language is set to German. This is the correct language, but the strings are still in English.

[Juergen]

OK, it seems to be another problem that I thought it would be:

The translateable strings were not found by PW. I have so much translations done, that I did not notice that the strings are not translated in the backend.😱

In other words: All translateable strings inside this template HTML file do not appear in the backend to be translateable, so they are not translated.

Now I have to find out, why these files were not fetched by ProcessWire.

[gebeer]

Can you rename the include file to .php? Then PW should pick it up for translation.

[Juergen]

Yes, you are right - PHP files will be fetched.

Anyway, the strings are still in the default language. No difference to before! 😔

I guess I have to overthink my template system for sending HTML emails, because the template files are always HTML files. 

Thank you for your help @gebeer

[gebeer]

Are you using MJML for compiling your email HTML. You can compile theam as .php files. Is it a namespace issue, do you have namespace ProcessWire in those email HTML files?

[Juergen]

No, my email templates are made the old fashioned way (HTML tables) and hand-written. And there is no namespace used inside those email files. The template files are part of a module and the module has its own namespace (not Processwire). So the module can send out various emails. It works fine until multi-language is used. I dont think that there is a namespace problem.

I also use some placeholders inside the templates, which will be filled with variable data from outside and this works in multi-language, because the translations are not set inside the template file, they are set inside the PHP file for sending the emails.