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Asked: 2026-05-15T08:30:16+00:00

I’m wondering how to deal internationalization in JavaScript. I googled but I’m not getting

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I’m wondering how to deal internationalization in JavaScript. I googled but I’m not getting convincing answers for:

  • Does JavaScript have native support for internationalization?
  • What is i18n in JavaScript?
  • How to deal with calendars, currencies, dates, etc.?

I’ve already read Internationalization inside JavaScript.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Localization support in legacy browsers is poor. Originally, this was due to phrases in the ECMAScript language spec that look like this:

    Number.prototype.toLocaleString()
    Produces a string value that represents the value of the Number formatted according to the
    conventions of the host environment’s current locale. This function is implementation-dependent, and
    it is permissible, but not encouraged, for it to return the same thing as toString.

    Every localization method defined in the spec is defined as "implementation-dependent", which results in a lot of inconsistencies. In this instance, Chrome Opera and Safari would return the same thing as .toString(). Firefox and IE will return locale formatted strings, and IE even includes a thousand separator (perfect for currency strings). Chrome was recently updated to return a thousands-separated string, though with no fixed decimal.

    For modern environments, the ECMAScript Internationalization API spec, a new standard that complements the ECMAScript Language spec, provides much better support for string comparison, number formatting, and the date and time formatting; it also fixes the corresponding functions in the Language Spec. An introduction can be found here. Implementations are available in:

    • Chrome 24
    • Firefox 29
    • Internet Explorer 11
    • Opera 15

    There is also a compatibility implementation, Intl.js, which will provide the API in environments where it doesn’t already exist.

    Determining the user’s preferred language remains a problem since there’s no specification for obtaining the current language. Each browser implements a method to obtain a language string, but this could be based on the user’s operating system language or just the language of the browser:

    // navigator.userLanguage for IE, navigator.language for others
var lang = navigator.language || navigator.userLanguage;

    A good workaround for this is to dump the Accept-Language header from the server to the client. If formatted as a JavaScript, it can be passed to the Internationalization API constructors, which will automatically pick the best (or first-supported) locale.

    In short, you have to put in a lot of the work yourself, or use a framework/library, because you cannot rely on the browser to do it for you.

    Various libraries and plugins for localization:

    • Others:

    Feel free to add/edit.

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