Question

I working on a website and have a mysql-table called ‘items’, like:

item_id | item

(The second column is just for identify the item_id.)

In a language1.php I store a array with the item_id and the name of the item itself in language1, like:

$items = array(
1 -> 'Apple',
2 -> 'Orange',
...
);

Depending on the language of the user, the correct language-file is included.

There should be an autocomplete-input-box for the items-array (< 1000 items/ array). I guess, its not a good solution, to search the array in the language1.php with php (“search_array” or some function like this), but i think there is no way to maintain this system and search by mysql, isn’t it?

How are you store different languages for websites and make them searchable?

Is it necessary to store all languages in a specific column in mysql?

Answer 1

I would probably add an items_localization table with columns like

item_id,
locale,
content, (in your base language of choice)
translation (the translated content)

that has a foreign key to item_id, and either a compound primary key on item_id, locale, or an autoincrement id field and a unique index on item_id, locale. Some folks like working with single-column, autoincrement primary keys because of the framework they are working with, so if this describes you, use the latter solution.

Alternatively if you wanted a wider localization solution you could just have a localization table with columns like

localization_id,
locale,
content,
translation

that can store any sort of localization. Then you items_localization table could just be a many-many join table with columns like

item_id,
localization_id

You could just do a join query to get the localization you are looking for. For using the first proposed table structure:

SELECT i.*, il.translation
FROM items AS i
INNER JOIN items_localization AS il on i.item_id = il.item_id
WHERE il.locale = ? AND il.translation LIKE "%?%"

Where you substitue your values for current locale and the autocomplete search phrase for the ?‘s.