TYPO3 Flow Connector to Gedmo Translatable

by Sebastian Kurfürst, sandstorm|media. Thanks to WebEssentials for sponsoring this work.

Using Gedmo.Translatable in TYPO3 Flow proved a little harder than originally anticipated -- that's why I created a small package which wraps up the necessary steps.

Has been tested on recent TYPO3 Flow master; should also work on Flow 2.2.

Usage

Just include this package, and then use Gedmo Translatable as explained in their documentation (e.g. using the @Gedmo\Translatable annotation): https://github.com/Atlantic18/DoctrineExtensions/blob/master/doc/translatable.md

Make sure to clear the code cache completely in Data/Temporary after installing this package!

Furthermore, make sure to create a doctrine migration which creates the ext_translations SQL table; e.g. run ./flow doctrine:migrationgenerate

Check out the example package at https://github.com/sandstorm/GedmoTest.

Model Annotations

Just annotate your model properties which shall be localized with Gedmo\Mapping\Annotation\Translatable.

Translating a model (low-level)

	/**
	 * Doctrine's Entity Manager. Note that "ObjectManager" is the name of the related interface.
	 *
	 * @Flow\Inject
	 * @var ObjectManager
	 */
	protected $entityManager;

	public function updateAction(Event $event) {
		/* @var $repository TranslationRepository */
		$repository = $this->entityManager->getRepository('Gedmo\\Translatable\\Entity\\Translation');
		$repository->translate($event, 'name', 'de', 'Deutscher Titel');
	}

Set current language

In order to set the current language for viewing, inject the Gedmo\Translatable\TranslatableListener class and set the current language on it: $translatableListener->setTranslatableLocale('de');.

Editing multiple languages at the same time

Mix-in the Trait Sandstorm\GedmoTranslatableConnector\TranslatableTrait into your model, e.g. by doing:

/**
 * @Flow\Entity
 */
class MyModel {
  use \Sandstorm\GedmoTranslatableConnector\TranslatableTrait;
  
  // make sure some properties have Gedmo\Translatable annotations
}

This trait adds a getTranslations() and setTranslations() method, allowing to get and set other translations of a model.
Now, you can easily edit multiple languages by binding the form element to translations.[language].[fieldname], e.g. this works like the following:

Name (default): <f:form.textfield property="name" /><br />
Name (de): <f:form.textfield property="translations.de.name" /><br />
Name (en): <f:form.textfield property="translations.en.name" /><br />

Fetching an object in another locale

If you have loaded an object in a specific locale, but lateron need to change the object to be in another locale, the method reloadInLocale($locale) (which is defined inside the trait Sandstorm\GedmoTranslatableConnector\TranslatableTrait) can be called:

$myModel->getName(); // will return the language which was set at the time where $myModel was fetched

$myModel->reloadInLocale('de');
$myModel->getName(); // will return *german*

NOTE: This has only been tested as long as these objects are not updated.

Inner Workings

(as a further reference -- could also be reduced if we change TYPO3 Flow a little on the relevant parts)

Settings.yaml: Ignore Gedmo namespace from Reflection, adds the Translatable Listener as Doctrine Event listener. This part is pretty standard for using other Gedmo Doctrine extensions as well.
Objects.yaml: Mark the TranslatableListener as singleton, such that you can inject it into your classes and set the current language. This part was straightforward as well.
Package.php: Make the entities of Gedmo Translatable known to Doctrine and in Reflection. This was quite tricky to archive, see the inline docs in the class how this was done.

TODO list

check TYPO3 Flow 2.2

visay/GedmoTranslatableConnector