You will notice that once you have started translating an application using poedit it’s quite a smooth process, what hampers the experience a little bit is the mutitude of ways you can write code in Zend Framework, this is great in every way for developers, but requires a bit of thinking when you need to also translate all the UI strings.
So how do we make poedit detect the strings while making our code pretty?
(And guys PLEASE comment on this article with your own hints, tips & quirks!)
For example;
This is a simple login form using Zend_Form;
Zend_Form is completely Zend_Translate i18n compatable, and will read in all strings from your translation sources without the use of specific $this->translate() calls, which makes the code ALOT prettier, see below;
class Form_Login extends Zend_Form {
public function init() {
$this->setAttrib('id', 'LoginForm');
$this->addElement('text', 'username', array(
'label' => $this->getView()->translate('Username'),
'description' => $this->getView()->translate('Please enter valid username'),
));
$this->addElement('password', 'password', array(
'label' => $this->getView()->translate('Password'),
'description' => $this->getView()->translate('Please enter valid password'),
));
$this->addElement('submit', 'submit', array(
'label' => $this->getView()->translate('Login'),
));
}
}
Is the same thing as; but a LOT shorter and cleaner!
class Form_Login extends Zend_Form {
public function init() {
$this->setAttrib('id', 'LoginForm');
$this->addElement('text', 'username', array(
'label' => _('Username'),
'description' => _('Please enter valid username'),
));
$this->addElement('password', 'password', array(
'label' => _('Password'),
'description' => _('Please enter valid password'),
));
$this->addElement('submit', 'submit', array(
'label' => _('Login'),
));
}
}
Both are caught by the poedit keywords scanner that looks for translate() as well as the translate helper shotcode _().
Some notes (And I’ll keep this section updated while I find more tips & hints and quirks!)
But! It always seem to be a But in there;
These two are NOT the same!
translate("Welcome %s, your last login was %s",$this->user['name'],$this->user['active']); ?>
user['name'],$this->user['active']); ?>
The second one explodes with; “Warning: _() expects exactly 1 parameter, 3 given”
That tells us that;
or even (if you have short tag mode on;
should be ok to use. except that it’s not producing the translated output in an view.phtml or layout.phtml. so we are forced to use;
translate('Logout'); ?>
