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i18n-abide Usage

Adding localization to your project, should not get in the way of your developers from a day to day perspective.

You will add this module, but if you don't have any localization files, it is okay and there won't be any errors.

Development

Any copy, label, or error message that will be shown to users should be wrapped in a gettext function.

These strings must be evaluated in the scope of a request, so we know which locale the user has.

In JavaScript or EJS templates use gettext. If you need to do string interpolation, use the format function, which is kind of like node.js' util.format, except crappier.

Using _ is more idiomatic, but conflicts with underscore.js on the client side JS and EJS files.

Technically, you can alias gettext to _ and use util.format in node.js code... but for development consistency, Mozilla codebases should keep EJS templates looking similar, regardless of if they are evaluated client or server-side. So we don't use _ which can be confused with underscore.js.

Variables

The request object and the response's template context have the following variables:

  • lang - User's preferred language
  • lang_dir - rtl or ltr (BIDI language support)
  • locale - OS level locale code
  • gettext - Gettext function
  • format - for string interpolation

Debugging

If code is evaluated in node.js (server-side) then translation is provided from the i18n/{locale}/messages.json file which contains the translation. These JSON files come from the message.po PO files.

If code is evaluated on the client-side, then static/gettext.js is in the house... strings are from the i18n/{locale}/client.js files.

If code is evaluated in your head, then clearly we are post-singularity. Why are you still using gettext?

You can change i18n in the above to examples by setting the translation_directory in your options to i18n-abide. If you do server side and client side strings, it is recommended that you put your translation_directory under a web accessible directory like static.

Of course you can integrate gettext.js and client.js via your existing JavaScript build to compress, minify, etc.

See API.md for more advanced uses of i18n-abide.