Exvo Globalize

Rails gem providing universal I18n support for your application. Supports I18n of both your normal Ruby/Rails app (based on the i18n gem) as well as javascript using a custom i18n library.

Ruby/Rails features:

additional database backed I18n backend to store the translations
in-memory caching of database backed translations
pluralization rules for 108 languages (config/locales/plurals.rb)
localization rules for 51 languages (config/locales/*.(yml|rb))
locale fallback support (will search for translation using I18n.default_locale when not found using requested locale)
web UI to view your application’s translations (/globalize/translations)

Javascript features:

all translations defined in config/locales/* are available in javascript
localization support for dates, times, numbers, currencies (localization rules are read from config/locales/*.(yml|rb)) (support at the same level as in Ruby/Rails)
locale fallback support (will search for translation using I18n.defaultLocale when not found using requested locale)
global t() and l() helpers to translate and localize phrases, respectively
does not depend on any other external javascript library
pluralizations rules defined for 108 languages (in exvo_globalize_i18n.js)

This gem also integrates your application with Globalize. Globalize is a service for website owners, who want to translate their websites into multiple languages by using human (as opposed to machine/automatic) translators.

Requirements

Rails 3.0+

Installation

Install the gem

$ gem install exvo_globalize

add it to the Gemfile

gem 'exvo_globalize'

bundle

$ bundle

finally generate the database migration and the javascript library:

$ rails generate exvo_globalize:install

If you don’t plan on using I18n in javascript you can just delete the generated public/javascripts/exvo_globalize_i18n.js file.

It is advised to have your /globalize/ actions behind an authorization barrier (besides /globalize/translations.json and /globalize/translations/js/*.js, which are by default publicly accessible). Create a config/initializers/exvo_globalize.rb file with similar contents:

I18n::Backend::GlobalizeStore.authenticator = proc {
  authenticate_user!
  require_admin!
}

authenticate_user! and require_admin! are just exemplary authorization actions.

Javascript support

Basic support for I18n in the javascript is included. In order for it to work you need to include two javascript files in your application’s layout (the order is important):

= javascript_include_tag 'exvo_globalize_i18n'
= i18n_translations_javascript_include_tag(I18n.locale)

Now you can use translations inside your javascript:

t("hello")
=> "Hello world!"

The above, of course, expects you to have the :hello key for the current I18n.locale in one of your config/locales/*.yml files.

The following I18n features are supported in javascript:

Locale fallback

If there is no translation in the desired locale, there will be another check performed to see if there is a translation available in the default_locale. If there is, display it.

By default, when including two javascript tags in your application (see installation notes), you will have translations in the desired locale merged with translations for the default_locale available in the javascript.

Localization

All standard I18n keys (see config/locales/* in this gem’s directory) are used for various localization rules. Examples follows (for :en locale).

Numbers

I18n.toNumber(1234)
=> "1,234.000"

l("number", 1234)
=> "1,234.000"

Percentages

I18n.toPercentage(1234)
=> "1234.000%"

l("percentage", 1234)
=> "1234.000%"

Currencies

I18n.toCurrency(12)
=> "12,00 USD"

l("currency", 12)
=> "12,00 USD"

Numbers in human sizes

I18n.toHumanSize(1024)
=> "1KB"

Dates and times

// uses ERB Ruby interpolation
I18n.strftime(I18n.parseDate("<%= Time.now %>"), "%Y/%m/%d %H:%M")
=> "2011/09/14 12:03"

// uses formats from `config/locale/en.yml` file
I18n.l("date.formats.default", "Wed Sep 14 12:03:11 +0200 2011")
=> "2011-09-14"

I18n.l("date.formats.long", "2011-09-14")
=> "September 14, 2011"

See spec/javascripts/exvo_globalize_i18n_spec.js for all available localization forms.

Getting back your database stored translations

If you wish to extract your database stored translations to a separate YAML/Ruby file, there are two rake task to help you with that:

$ bundle exec rake globalize:translations:dump:yaml

and

$ bundle exec rake globalize:translations:dump:ruby

Globalize integration

In order to fully integrate this gem with Globalize, after installing it you need to register your application and order some translations (Globalize should automatically detect the gem installation and should let you choose the JSON translations option).

By default a link between your application and Globalize is established by using request.host by the gem. If your application’s main DNS record is a CNAME (as is the common case when using Heroku), you can set your application’s domain in the config/initializers/exvo_globalize.rb file:

ENV['GLOBALIZE_REQUEST_HOST'] = 'yourawesomewebapp.com'

Note that this host must be the same as the one you have used when registering your application at Globalize. Otherwise updating translations will not be possible.

When Globalize translations are ready, you need to manually update them at your application by going to this url:

http://yourawesomewebapp.com/globalize/translations

And pressing Update translations.

Caveats

Adding or changing any existing translations requires application restart for those new updated translations to be visible (it is because of the caching mechanism, which does not currently support cache-invalidation).
Heroku considerations: updating translations from Globalize, when there are many translations in many different languages is a time consuming process. Unfortunately Heroku has a habit of silently killing web processes running longer than a specified period of time (typically 30s). When that happenes your translations will be only partially updated. Best way to deal with that is to update them from heroku console using this script:

ENV["GLOBALIZE_USE_PRODUCTION_SERVER"] = "true"

@globalize_app = GlobalizeApp.new("your-applications-host-registered-at-globalize")

translations = @globalize_app.fetch_translations
I18n.backend.store_nested_translations(translations)

Running the specs

Running specs via Guard is the recommended way:

$ bundle exec guard

But specs can be run separately as well:

$ bundle exec rspec spec

and

$ jasmine-headless-webkit -c

There is a great guide for setting up jasmine-headless-webkit in your OS if you have problems with it.

Copyrights

exvo_globalize is based on the following projects:

pjg/exvo_globalize