Question

i want to implement the following behaviour:

if the users browser-language is e.g. EN, he should be redirected to a the url http://foo.bar/hello, if the browser-language is DE then to http://foo.bar/hallo.

so how do i need to set my routes to redirect the user to the right language (e.g. when an english user requests the DE route and vice versa) and how can i set a hidden locale parameter, so i can load the right view in the controller?

i want to use the same controller for both languages (one method per page), but localized views (foo.en.html.erb etc.)

thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I don’t think that what you want to try to get is a good idea, and I will explain that here. I don’t understand why you would choose a different approach from the ones that are provided by Rails out of the box, and explained in details in the “Internationalization Guide, Sections 2.3 and further”.

Here are the arguments:

• Rails provides at least 3 different ways to change the locale:
  1. Getting it from parameters: http://my.example.com/books?locale=de
  2. Getting it from the sub-domain: http://de.example.com/books
  3. Client supplied application, like the accept-header
• All have the advantage that the controller and action will be the same, which is what you normally want to have.
• There are helper methods if you want to change your behavior depending on the locate: locale, …
• However, you may localize views as a whole if you want to do: see localized views. This will perhaps lead to a duplication in view code.
• Or you use the translation and localization API as in I18n.t 'store.title' or I18n.l Time.now.

A hidden locale parameter has the disadvantage that it is not obvious (for the user) which locale is used.