Easily translate your Gatsby website into multiple languages.
- Seamless integration with react-i18next - a powerful internationalization framework for React.
- Code splitting. Load translations for each page separately.
- Automatic redirection based on the user's preferred language in browser provided by browser-lang.
- Support multi-language url routes in a single page component. You don't have to create separate pages such as
pages/en/index.jsorpages/es/index.js. - SEO friendly
- Support for gatsby-plugin-layout
When you build multilingual sites, Google recommends using different URLs for each language version of a page rather than using cookies or browser settings to adjust the content language on the page. (read more)
As of V2.0.0, this plugin only supports Gatsby 4.16.0+ and React 18+.
As of v1.0.0, language JSON resources should be loaded by gatsby-source-filesystem plugin and then fetched by GraphQL query. It enables incremental build and hot-reload as language JSON files change.
Users who have loaded language JSON files using path option will be affected. Please check configuration example on below.
- monei.com - The digital payment gateway with best rates.
- moonmail.io - OmniChannel Communication Platform used by more than 100,000 businesses worldwide.
- nyxo.app – Sleep tracking and coaching (source code)
- Best internationalization for Gatsby by Adriano Raiano
yarn add gatsby-plugin-react-i18next i18next react-i18next
or
npm install --save gatsby-plugin-react-i18next i18next react-i18next
// In your gatsby-config.js
plugins: [
{
resolve: `gatsby-source-filesystem`,
options: {
path: `${__dirname}/locales`,
name: `locale`
}
},
{
resolve: `gatsby-plugin-react-i18next`,
options: {
localeJsonSourceName: `locale`, // name given to `gatsby-source-filesystem` plugin.
languages: [`en`, `es`, `de`],
defaultLanguage: `en`,
siteUrl: `https://example.com`,
// if you are using trailingSlash gatsby config include it here, as well (the default is 'always')
trailingSlash: 'always',
// you can pass any i18next options
i18nextOptions: {
interpolation: {
escapeValue: false // not needed for react as it escapes by default
},
keySeparator: false,
nsSeparator: false
},
pages: [
{
matchPath: '/:lang?/blog/:uid',
getLanguageFromPath: true,
excludeLanguages: ['es']
},
{
matchPath: '/preview',
languages: ['en']
}
]
}
}
];This example is not using semantic keys instead the entire message will be used as a key. Read more.
NOTE: If you want nested translation keys do not set keySeparator: false. More configuration options.
For example,
| language resource files | language |
|---|---|
| /locales/en/index.json | English |
| /locales/es/index.json | Spanish |
| /locales/de/index.json | German |
You can use different namespaces to organize your translations. Use the following file structure:
|-- language
|-- namespace.json
For example:
|-- en
|-- common.json
|-- index.json
The default namespace is translation. Read more about i18next namespaces
Use react i18next useTranslation react hook and Trans component to translate your pages.
gatsby-plugin-react-i18next exposes all react-i18next methods and components.
Replace Gatsby Link component with the Link component exported from gatsby-plugin-react-i18next
import {graphql} from 'gatsby';
import React from 'react';
import {Link, Trans, useTranslation} from 'gatsby-plugin-react-i18next';
import Layout from '../components/layout';
import Image from '../components/image';
import SEO from '../components/seo';
const IndexPage = () => {
const {t} = useTranslation();
return (
<Layout>
<SEO title={t('Home')} />
<h1>
<Trans>Hi people</Trans>
</h1>
<p>
<Trans>Welcome to your new Gatsby site.</Trans>
</p>
<p>
<Trans>Now go build something great.</Trans>
</p>
<div style={{maxWidth: `300px`, marginBottom: `1.45rem`}}>
<Image />
</div>
<Link to="/page-2/">
<Trans>Go to page 2</Trans>
</Link>
</Layout>
);
};
export default IndexPage;
export const query = graphql`
query ($language: String!) {
locales: allLocale(filter: {language: {eq: $language}}) {
edges {
node {
ns
data
language
}
}
}
}
`;and in locales/en/translations.json you will have
{
"Home": "Home",
"Hi people": "Hi people",
"Welcome to your new Gatsby site.": "Welcome to your new Gatsby site.",
"Now go build something great.": "Now go build something great.",
"Go to page 2": "Go to page 2"
}This example is not using semantic keys instead the entire message will be used as a key. Read more.
gatsby-plugin-react-i18next exposes useI18next hook
import {Link, useI18next} from 'gatsby-plugin-react-i18next';
import React from 'react';
const Header = ({siteTitle}) => {
const {languages, changeLanguage} = useI18next();
return (
<header className="main-header">
<h1 style={{margin: 0}}>
<Link
to="/"
style={{
color: `white`,
textDecoration: `none`
}}>
{siteTitle}
</Link>
</h1>
<ul className="languages">
{languages.map((lng) => (
<li key={lng}>
<a
href="#"
onClick={(e) => {
e.preventDefault();
changeLanguage(lng);
}}>
{lng}
</a>
</li>
))}
</ul>
</header>
);
};Or a more SEO friendly version using Link component
import {Link, useI18next} from 'gatsby-plugin-react-i18next';
import PropTypes from 'prop-types';
import React from 'react';
const Header = ({siteTitle}) => {
const {languages, originalPath} = useI18next();
return (
<header className="main-header">
<h1 style={{margin: 0}}>
<Link
to="/"
style={{
color: `white`,
textDecoration: `none`
}}>
{siteTitle}
</Link>
</h1>
<ul className="languages">
{languages.map((lng) => (
<li key={lng}>
<Link to={originalPath} language={lng}>
{lng}
</Link>
</li>
))}
</ul>
</header>
);
};| Option | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| localeJsonSourceName | string | name of JSON translation file nodes that are loaded by gatsby-source-filesystem (set by option.name). Default is locale |
| localeJsonNodeName | string | name of GraphQL node that holds locale data. Default is locales |
| languages | string[] | supported language keys |
| defaultLanguage | string | default language when visiting /page instead of /es/page |
| fallbackLanguage | string | optionally fallback to a different language than the defaultLanguage |
| generateDefaultLanguagePage | boolean | generate dedicated page for default language. e.g) /en/page. It is useful when you need page urls for all languages. For example, server-side redirect using Accept-Language header. Default is false. |
| redirect | boolean | if the value is true, / or /page-2 will be redirected to the user's preferred language router. e.g) /es or /es/page-2. Otherwise, the pages will render defaultLangugage language. Default is true |
| siteUrl | string | public site url, is used to generate language specific meta tags |
| pages | array | an array of page options used to modify plugin behaviour for specific pages |
| i18nextOptions | object | i18next configuration options |
| verbose | boolean | Verbose output. Default is true |
| Option | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| matchPath | string | a path pattern like /:lang?/blog/:uid, check path-to-regexp for more info |
| getLanguageFromPath | boolean | if set to true the language will be taken from the :lang param in the path instead of automatically generating a new page for each language |
| excludeLanguages | array | an array of languages to exclude, if specified the plugin will not automatically generate pages for those languages, this option can be used to replace pages in some languages with custom ones |
| languages | array | an array of languages, if specified the plugin will automatically generate pages only for those languages |
Link component is identical to Gatsby Link component except that you can provide additional language prop to create a link to a page with different language
import {Link} from 'gatsby-plugin-react-i18next';
const SpanishAboutLink = () => (
<Link to="/about" language="es">
About page in Spanish
</Link>
);Use this react context to access language information about the page
const context = React.useContext(I18nextContext);Content of the context object
| Attribute | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| language | string | current language |
| languages | string[] | supported language keys |
| routed | boolean | if false it means that the page is in default language |
| defaultLanguage | string | default language provided in plugin options |
| originalPath | string | page path in default language |
| path | string | page path |
| siteUrl | string | public site url provided in plugin options |
The same context will be also available in the Gatsby pageContext.i18n object
This react hook returns I18nextContext, object and additional helper functions
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
| navigate | This is a wrapper around Gatsby navigate helper function that will navigate to the page in selected language |
| changeLanguage | A helper function to change language. The first parameter is a language code. Signature: (language: string, to?: string, options?: NavigateOptions) => Promise<void>. You can pass additional parameters to navigate to different page. |
useI18next also exposes the output of react i18next useTranslation so you can use
const {t} = useI18next();For example if you have some other plugin or script that generates your blog posts from headless CRM like prismic.io in different languages you would like to exclude those pages, to not generate duplicates for each language key. You can do that by providing pages option.
pages: [
{
matchPath: '/:lang?/blog/:uid',
getLanguageFromPath: true,
excludeLanguages: ['es']
}
];You have to specify a :lang url param, so the plugin knows what part of the path should be treated as language key.
In this example the plugin will automatically generate language pages for all languages except es. Assuming that you have ['en', 'es', 'de'] languages the blog post with the path /blog/hello-world you will have the following pages generated:
/blog/hello-world- the English version (if you haveenas adefaultLanguage)/es/blog/hello-world- the Spanish version that should exist before you run the plugin (created manually or at build time with a plugin or api call)/de/blog/hello-world- the German version that is generated automatically
Omit excludeLanguages to get all the languages form the path. Make sure that you have pages for all the languages that you specify in the plugin, otherwise you might have broken links.
You may also need to add a pages config for the 404 page, if it uses the same path pattern as your excluded pages. Note that the order of these rules is important.
pages: [
{
matchPath: '/:lang?/404',
getLanguageFromPath: false
},
{
matchPath: '/:lang?/:uid',
getLanguageFromPath: true,
excludeLanguages: ['es']
}
];You can limit the languages used to generate versions of a specific page, for example to limit /preview page to only English version:
pages: [
{
matchPath: '/preview',
languages: ['en']
}
];You can use ns and language field in gatsby page queries to fetch specific namespaces that are being used in the page. This will be useful when you have several big pages with lots of translations.
export const query = graphql`
query ($language: String!) {
locales: allLocale(filter: {ns: {in: ["common", "index"]}, language: {eq: $language}}) {
edges {
node {
ns
data
language
}
}
}
}
`;Note that in this case only files common.json and index.json will be loaded.
This plugin will automatically add all loaded namespaces as fallback namespaces so if you don't specify a namespace in your translations they will still work.
You can use language variable in gatsby page queries to fetch additional data for each language. For example if you're using gatsby-transformer-json your query might look like:
export const query = graphql`
query ($language: String!) {
dataJson(language: {eq: $language}) {
...DataFragment
}
}
`;You can use gatsby-plugin-sitemap to automatically generate a sitemap during build time. You need to customize query to fetch only original pages and then serialize data to build a sitemap. Here is an example:
// In your gatsby-config.js
plugins: [
{
resolve: 'gatsby-plugin-sitemap',
options: {
excludes: ['/**/404', '/**/404.html'],
query: `
{
site {
siteMetadata {
siteUrl
}
}
allSitePage(filter: {context: {i18n: {routed: {eq: false}}}}) {
edges {
node {
context {
i18n {
defaultLanguage
languages
originalPath
}
}
path
}
}
}
}
`,
serialize: ({site, allSitePage}) => {
return allSitePage.edges.map((edge) => {
const {languages, originalPath, defaultLanguage} = edge.node.context.i18n;
const {siteUrl} = site.siteMetadata;
const url = siteUrl + originalPath;
const links = [
{lang: defaultLanguage, url},
{lang: 'x-default', url}
];
languages.forEach((lang) => {
if (lang === defaultLanguage) return;
links.push({lang, url: `${siteUrl}/${lang}${originalPath}`});
});
return {
url,
changefreq: 'daily',
priority: originalPath === '/' ? 1.0 : 0.7,
links
};
});
}
}
}
];By default this plugin is setup to fallback on the entire message string, that is used as language key.
In order to use semantic keys, so the fallback message string is the default's language value (instead of the key), it is possible to do the following;
In /gatsby-config.js, setup the plugin as usual, and add the key options.i18nextOptions.fallbackLng (i18next documentation, configuration options, and fallback options);
{
resolve: `gatsby-plugin-react-i18next`,
options: {
localeJsonSourceName: `locale`,
languages: [`en`, `de`, `fr`],
defaultLanguage: `en`,
siteUrl: `https://example.com/`,
i18nextOptions: {
fallbackLng: 'en', // here we provide the fallback language to i18next
interpolation: {
escapeValue: false
},
keySeparator: false,
nsSeparator: false
}
}
}
Then in a page query, we avoid to specify a $language variable used as filter, so i18next gets access to the available locales, used as fallback.
// /pages/index.js
export const query = graphql`
query { // no $language variable defined, no filters on allLocale
locales: allLocale {
edges {
node {
ns
data
language
}
}
}
}
`;
You can use babel-plugin-i18next-extract automatically extract translations inside t function and Trans component from you pages and save them in JSON.
- Install
yarn add @babel/cli @babel/plugin-transform-typescript babel-plugin-i18next-extract -D
- create
babel-extract.config.jsfile (don't name itbabel.config.js, or it will be used by gatsby)
module.exports = {
presets: ['babel-preset-gatsby'],
plugins: [
[
'i18next-extract',
{
keySeparator: null,
nsSeparator: null,
keyAsDefaultValue: ['en'],
useI18nextDefaultValue: ['en'],
discardOldKeys: true,
outputPath: 'locales/{{locale}}/{{ns}}.json',
customTransComponents: [['gatsby-plugin-react-i18next', 'Trans']]
}
]
],
overrides: [
{
test: [`**/*.ts`, `**/*.tsx`],
plugins: [[`@babel/plugin-transform-typescript`, {isTSX: true}]]
}
]
};- add a script to your
package.json
{
"scripts": {
"extract": "yarn run babel --config-file ./babel-extract.config.js -o tmp/chunk.js 'src/**/*.{js,jsx,ts,tsx}' && rm -rf tmp"
}
}If you want to extract translations per page, you can add a special comment at the beginning of the page:
// i18next-extract-mark-ns-start about-page
This will create a file about-page.json with all the translations on this page.
To load this file you need to specify a namespace like this:
export const query = graphql`
query ($language: String!) {
locales: allLocale(
filter: {ns: {in: ["translation", "about-page"]}, language: {eq: $language}}
) {
edges {
node {
ns
data
language
}
}
}
}
`;After your messages had been extracted you can use AWS Translate to automatically translate messages to different languages.
This functionality is out of the scope of this plugin, but you can get the idea from this script.
By default, on first load, this plugin will fallback to the defaultLanguage if the browser's detected language is not included in the array of languages.
If you want to fallback to a different language in the languages array, you can set the fallbackLanguage option.
For example, if the default language of your site is Japanese, you only have English as another language, and you want all other browser-detected languages to fallback to English, not Japanese.
module.exports = {
plugins: [
{
resolve: 'gatsby-plugin-react-i18next',
options: {
defaultLanguage: 'ja',
fallbackLanguage: 'en'
}
}
]
};- Best internationalization for Gatsby by Adriano Raiano
This package is based on:
- gatsby-plugin-intl by Daewoong Moon
- gatsby-i18n-plugin by ikhudo
MIT © microapps