Demonstrates maintaining a pot template, then converting populated po catalogues into json catalogues and using gettext functions within the application code.
To install the application, run the following:
npm install;
To run the application, run the following:
make convert-po-files;
gulp build && gulp server;
I have tried using i18n-parser which does a good job of identifying simple strings needing to be output into a .json object but it's drawbacks outweigh its benefits.
Firstly, it completely ignores extracting plurals because it has no way to identify them within the translations. While other libraries such as Jed have specific ngettext methods to deal with plurals, this one does not. Secondly, if we manually update the output .json file from the parser with our plural keys, then run the parser again, it will overwrite all of our manual updates. Thirdly, the parser is unable to output a .pot file which is the standard translators will be expecting to deal with.
For these reasons, it's advised to manually maintain the .pot file within ./locales in order to ensure that plurals can be input correctly. For guidance on the structure of code within .pot files, see this guide.
Using an editor such as POEdit, create a new catalog from the .pot file and ensure you set the plural form to be the correct value for the language you're about to be translating. You can find a list of plural forms here which should be of help. After this is done, fill out and save your .po file as required, placing it into a subdirectory of ./locales which matches the languages two letter code.
NOTE: If you are using POEdit and are creating a catalog for the first time you may find it best to add the plural form after the initial setup screen. Sometimes if the plural form is input during the first setup screen it doesn't work correctly.
The library is unable to directly read a .po file so it must be converted into i18next-compatible .json format. This is done via a module known as i18next-conv which can do two-way conversion on both of these file formats. Conversion to .json files can be run with the following command:
make convert-po-files
This command will trigger a sub-method I've written within the Makefile. It cycles through each of our locale folders, reads the .po files and converts them into .json files, placing them in the same folder with the same filename. The list of locales it parses is stated within the Makefile and will need to be kept up to date as more languages are added.