Question

I am not sure if I just have a bad structure for my code or this is a problem not normally found, but I don’t even know how to start looking for a solution for my problem. I have my own simple translation script which is called like this:

<?php echo $Translate->text("Name"); ?>

It would return (and echo) a string with a keyword ‘Name’. The problem is, for several reasons (name: misstranslations, report, development, translation in situ), I might want to retrieve all strings’ keywords that are on a page. A simple page (example.com/campus/index.php) looks like this:

<h1> <?php echo $Translate->text(Campus); ?> </h1>

<p style="text-align:justify;">
  <?php echo $Translate->text(126); ?>
</p>

<p style="text-align:justify;">
  <?php echo $Translate->text(129); ?>
</p>

<a href="<?php $Link->create("campus/about"); ?>">
  <h2 class="bodymenu"><?php echo $Translate->text(About); ?> </h2>
</a>
<p style="text-align:justify;">
  <?php echo $Translate->text(146); ?>
</p>

<a href="<?php $Link->create("campus/learning_center"); ?>">
  <h2 class="bodymenu"><?php echo $Translate->text(Learning_center); ?> </h2>
</a>
<p style="text-align:justify;">
  <?php echo $Translate->text(147); ?>
</p>

<a href="<?php $Link->create("campus/residence"); ?>">
  <h2 class="bodymenu"><?php echo $Translate->text(Residence); ?> </h2>
</a>
<p style="text-align:justify;">
  <?php echo $Translate->text(128); ?>
</p>

And I would like to obtain in some situations: $Translations=array("Campus","126","129","About","146","Learning_center","147","Residence","128"); for further processing (EDIT) from another page.

In some cases there’s much more php logic mixed in the page, in some others it’s like this. There’s much more logic code and classes that it’s included automatically before and after every page. So, basically, I’d like to know (for this example but being able to extend it) how could I retrieve all the keywords.

I am thinking about 2 methods basically, but I don’t think either is optimal. First would be to parse the php code as is using regex. Since I know the bits that I’m looking for, I thing it would be possible. Second one is that, depending on a SESSION variable, I render the html and parse it, so the echo $Translate->text(Campus); would return something like <span id="Translation">Campus</span> and then parse only the html and retrieve all the ids. Can you think about any other way to retrieve the ids before I get on this?.

PS, I DON’T want to hardcode all the id’s in an array at the beginning or end of a page.

Answer 1

Do not reinvent the wheel by implementing a translating system. The gettext extension is there for painless, on the fly, language switching.

Basicly you write your site in a default language:

<?php echo _("Name"); ?>

Do not write <?php echo $Translate->text(147); ?>, noboby knows what that is. Write:

<?php echo _("Learning Centre"); ?>

For managing translations there is a choice of editors for Windows, Linux and Mac, POEdit for example.

Switching to a different language is easy:

public function SetDomain( $path )
{
    define( 'DOMAIN', 'messages' );
    bindtextdomain( DOMAIN, $path );
    bind_textdomain_codeset( DOMAIN, "UTF-8" );
    textdomain( DOMAIN );
}

note: if you set short_open_tags to on you can write:

<?= _("Name"); ?>