Globalizing Rails Jeremy Voorhis Lead Architect, www.jvoorhis.com www.planetargon.com 1 

What is Globalization? • Internationalization • Localization • A cross-cutting concern that will transform your application 2 

Internationalization (i18n) • Preparation of software to be useful in multiple locales • Strings (dynamic and literal) that can be translated • Strings that may be bidirectional • Dates, times and numbers that can be formatted • is it 123,456.78 or 123.456,78? 3 

Localization (L10n) • Providing translated content for a specific language • Designs from right to left • Formatting dates, times and numbers for a specific region • Content that is sensitive to your audience’s culture 4 

Unicode • Unpopular in Japan, and not natively supported by Ruby • Support available through jcode module • require ‘jcode’ $KCODE = ‘u’ • Your database must support unicode too! 5 

Locales • Operating definition: a combination of a language and a region • Can be identified with a locale tag • Globalize understands these standards 6 

Locale Tags • Locale tags follow RFC 3066 • Language-Tag = Primary-subtag *( "-" Subtag ) Primary-subtag = 1*8ALPHA Subtag = 1*8(ALPHA / DIGIT) • Primary-subtag is an ISO 639 language code and should be lowercase • Subtag is typically an ISO 3166 country code and should be CAPITALIZED • Sometimes you have to wing it 7 

Example Productions • en-US • fr-CA • es-419 8 

What is Globalize? • A Rails plugin providing internationalization services to a Rails application • Model translations • View translations • Date, Time, Number formatting 9 

Getting Started With Globalize 10 

Installing Globalize $ script/plugin install http://svn.globalize-rails.org/svn/globalize/ globalize/trunk $ rake globalize:setup Locale.set_base_language ‘en-US’ 11 

Setting the Base Language # Include your application configuration below Locale.set_base_language 'en-US' 12 

Capturing Locales map.connect ':locale/:controller/:action/:permalink' 13 

Setting an Active Locale class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base before_filter :set_locale def set_locale begin Locale.set params[:locale] rescue ArgumentError redirect_to params.merge( 'locale' => 'en-US' ) end end end 14 

Using Model Translations # Table "public.features" # Column | Type #-------------+----------------------------- # id | integer # headline | character varying(255) # abstract | text # body | text # permalink | text # created_at | timestamp without time zone # modified_at | timestamp without time zone class Feature < ActiveRecord::Base translates :headline, :abstract, :body end 15 

Using View Translations

<%= 'FEATURES'.t -%>

or

<%= :title.t -%>

16 

Advanced Techniques • Predicated blocks • Translation availability helper 17 

The Predicated Block <% base_language_only do %> <%= link_to 'Destroy', { :action => 'destroy', :id => record.id }, { :post => true, :confirm => 'Are you sure?' } %> <% end %> 18 

The Predicated Block Defined def base_language_only yield if Locale.base? end def not_base_language yield unless Locale.base? end 19 

Notify users when a translation is not available 20 

A Translation Availability Helper <%= translation_availability_for :page, :body %> <%= markdown @page.body %> 21 

Translation Availability Helper Defined def translation_availability_for object_name, facet, message = nil not_base_language do message ||= content_tag 'p', '(Translation not available)'.t object = instance_variable_get "@#{object_name}" message if object && !object.send( facet ).blank? && object.send( "#{facet} _is_base?" ) end end 22 

A Gallery of Practical Interface Design • Switching locales • Providing reference text • Bidirectional views • View translations 23 

Make It Easy for Users to Switch Locales 24 

Locale selector for public site 25 

The same helper is used in the admin site 26 

Translation Admin With English Reference 27 

Base language administration screen params[:locale] # => ‘en-US’ 28 

Hide untranslated fields and provide a reference params[:locale] # => ‘zh-Hant’ 29 

Bidirectional Views 30 

English text is read left to right http://www.rashgash.co.il/en 31 

Hebrew text is read right to left http://www.rashgash.co.il/ 32 

Make it Easy for Translators to Update String Literals in Your Views 33 

Admin users can switch locales and update strings Translations provided by Google ;) 34 

Globalize Something • www.globalize-rails.org • Trac • Wiki • Mailing list • globalize.rubyforge.org • API Docs 35 

Acknowledgments • Joshua Harvey • Joshua Sierles 36