[Solar-talk] locale strings + replacements

[Antti Holvikari]

On 11/16/06, Rodrigo Moraes <rodrigo.moraes at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> Antti told me this idea some time ago: Solar::locale + replacements. I
> don't remember of seeing he posting about this, so here it is. Let's
> say we have a silly locale string like:
>
>     'TEXT_MONKEYS_INVASION' => 'The %2$s contains %1$d monkeys.';
>
> Then we can call the GetText helper passing replacements for the string:
>
>     $data = array(7, 'house');
>     echo $this->getText('TEXT_MONKEYS_INVASION', 1, $data)
>
> ...which will output:
>
>     The house contains 7 monkeys.
>
> As you see, the house is full of monkeys. I mean, this is useful for
> building locale strings that are easily adapted to different language
> grammars.
>
> And all it needs is a basic change - add a parameter "replacements" to
> the locale helpers and functions:
>
> Solar_View_Helper_GetText
> --------------------------------------
>     public function getText($key, $num = 1, $replacements = null)
>     {
>         return $this->_view->escape($this->_view->getTextRaw($key,
> $num, $replacements));
>     }
>
>
> Solar_View_Helper_GetTextRaw
> --------------------------------------
>     public function getTextRaw($key, $num = 1, $replacements = null)
>     {
>         // [snip]
>
>         // get the translation
>         return Solar::locale($class, $key, $num, $replacements);
>     }
>
> Solar
> --------------------------------------
> public static function locale($class, $key, $num = 1, $replacements = null)
> {
>     // [snip]
>
>     // return the number-appropriate version of the
>     // translated key, if multiple values exist.
>     if ($num != 1 && ! empty($string[1])) {
>         if(!$replacements) {
>             return $string[1];
>         } else {
>             return vsprintf($string[1], $replacements);
>         }
>     } else {
>         if(!$replacements) {
>             return $string[0];
>         } else {
>             return vsprintf($string[0], $replacements);
>         }
>     }
> }
>
> Simple, huh? And it is so useful. Maybe you will find the strings ugly
> with the sprintf specifications, but this is the simplest PHP
> implementation, I think. Different implementations (using str_replace
> or other functions) can be done on the helper level. Solar should
> provide a simple way to use string replacements.
>
> Do you think this would be flexible enough? Do you think something
> like this should be implemented in the Solar::locale() level or only
> in helpers?
>
> But anyway, here's (more or less) Antti's idea (I hope; don't kill me,
> Antti :-).

I wont :-)

Yep, my idea was *exactly* or very close to that. I can't remember why
I didn't propose this feature. I had some ideas on howto hand those
"replacements" to the Solar_Sql_Table validation rules. One could be
to be able to use array for the locale string if you wanted the
placeholders to be replaced like so:

...
'valid' => array('rangeLenght', array('This value should be %d-%d
characters long', 4, 10), 4, 10),
...

We would get rid of i.e VALID_RANGELENGTH's not so good feedback "This
value is too short or too long" to something like "This value should
be 4-10 characters long". I remember thinking this that it might be
too complicated to implement everywhere so I guess that's why I
dropped the idea.   Nevertheless, this is something worth reviewing.

-- 
Antti Holvikari <http://phphalo.com>