Question

How can I localize strings in cakePhp? I havent had any success with the online documentation. Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

There are a couple of steps:

1. First, set the locale to be used
2. Create one or more .po files for that language
3. Wrap all of your l10n-able strings with the __() or __d() helper methods

Here’s an excerpt from one of my projects:

# app/app_controller.php
uses ( 'L10n' );

class AppController extends Controller {
  public function beforeFilter() {
    /**
     * Derive the desired locale by reading the subdomain from
     * the HTTP_HOST server variable. Locale subdomains can use
     * either the 2 or 3 character ISO code. Information on locale
     * ISO codes is at http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php.
     */
    $this->L10n = new L10n();

    /** Auto-detect the request language settings */
    $this->L10n->get();

    /**
     * Set the default "domain" for translations. The domain is the
     * same as the po file name in a given locale directory. e.g.
     * __d( 'homepage', 'message_id' ) would look for the
     * message_id key in homepage.po. Using the __() convenience
     * function will always look in default.po.
     */
    $this->set( 'domain', 'default' );
  }

  # The rest of your AppController code
}

That snippet will set the language. All you need to do is provide the appropriate .po files in the /app/locale/eng/LC_MESSAGES/ directory. The CakePHP book provides sufficient information on this, I think.

If you choose to use just one .po file, you’ll wrap your strings with the __() helper. I chose multiple .po files in order to avoid one massive file, so I used the __d() helper so that I could specify which domain (domain == name of the .po file without the .po extension).

UPDATE

I should add that you’ll need to use the Translate behavior to help you with database content that requires translation.