Question

I’m creating an application where products will be created by my customer (something like an e-commerce website), so I obviously require translated descriptions stored in database, I can’t force my customer to learn git/yml.

I have two ideas on how to correctly localize descriptions (and eventually product name) and store them in database, but if there is a well-known approach that I should use, I would be really happy to know it.

The first idea seems the most logical for me, but I would like to make it “transparent” to me, I don’t want to write joins everywhere, so some suggestion on how to achieve this, if it’s the correct one, would be appreciated.

Idea 1:
Create a database table products (with name and description field set maybe to the default locale language), then a products_translations table which contains a table structured in this way:

products_translations
- id
- locale
- product_id
- name
- description

As an example: product_translation: { id: 1, locale: 'en', product_id: 3, name: 'toy', description: 'play' }

But I want to access to translations without the requirement to write a lot of IFs everywhere. So if I write product.name it should return en or it based on current locale.

Bonus: Are there any gems that can help me to achieve this?

Idea 2: The other idea is to have a table with name_locale1, name_it and so on, but I don’t like this approach because will pollute my model objects with fields and I will have a giant table.

However, in this way I can avoid join on every query for that object.

If there is a greater approach which I don’t know about (a database pattern or similar), it’s ok that too, I’m not forced to strict to only these two ideas, however I have to choose between the two and I really don’t know which could be better.

Important: I would like to keep translations stored in yml files, except for dynamic contents, which obviously require translations in database.

Answer 1

I agree with PinnyM that the first approach is the better of the two, but rather than implement your own schema, I would highly recommend you implement Globalize3 where most of the structural decisions have been taken for you (and by Mr Fuchs himself, no less). Also, with the rails helpers, you just call something like product.name on a model instance and the gem will figure out how to display it in the correct locale, awesome!