gettext

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

gettext — Lookup a message in the current domain

Description

gettext(string $message): string

Looks up a message in the current domain.

Parameters

message: The message being translated.

Return Values

Returns a translated string if one is found in the translation table, or the submitted message if not found.

Examples

Example #1 gettext()-check

<?php
// Set language to German
putenv('LC_ALL=de_DE');
setlocale(LC_ALL, 'de_DE');

// Specify location of translation tables
bindtextdomain("myPHPApp", "./locale");

// Choose domain
textdomain("myPHPApp");

// Translation is looking for in ./locale/de_DE/LC_MESSAGES/myPHPApp.mo now

// Print a test message
echo gettext("Welcome to My PHP Application");

// Or use the alias _() for gettext()
echo _("Have a nice day");
?>

Notes

Note:
You may use the underscore character '_' as an alias to this function.

Note:
Setting a language isn't enough for some systems and the putenv() should be used to define the current locale.

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User Contributed Notes 17 notes

down

mikko dot rantalainen at peda dot net ¶

10 years ago

Worth noting is that gettext honors environment variables while selecting the language to use: http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Locale-Environment-Variables.html

"When a program looks up locale dependent values, it does this according to the following environment variables, in priority order:

    LANGUAGE
    LC_ALL
    LC_xxx, according to selected locale category: LC_CTYPE, LC_NUMERIC, LC_TIME, LC_COLLATE, LC_MONETARY, LC_MESSAGES, ...
    LANG 

Variables whose value is set but is empty are ignored in this lookup. "

In short, if you have non-empty LANGUAGE, you may end up with unexpected localization strings. On the other hand, LANGUAGE can be used to define fallback language if some translation is missing.

down

kingjackal at gmail dot com ¶

6 years ago

If your PO/MO files make use of msgctxt (Context), you'll be frustrated to find that gettext(msgid) won't work as you might expect (even if msgid is unique).

In this case, you must use ASCII char 4 [EOT, End Of Text] glued between the msgctxt and msgid.

Example PO content:

    msgctxt "Context"
    msgid "Test string"
    msgstr "Test translation"

    msgid "Standard string"
    msgstr "Standard translation"

The following will work:

<?php
gettext('Context' . "\004" . 'Test string');
gettext('Standard string');
?>

The following will NOT work:

<?php
gettext('Test string');
?>

down

ashi009 at gmail dot com ¶

12 years ago

The simplest way to by-pass gettext() cache, without restart apache nor change domain.

The fix is incredible simple, first create a dummy link to the locale folder where .mo files stored:

cd locale
ln -s . nocache

Then add one single line before bindtextdomain()

<?php
bindtextdomain('domain', './locale/nocache');
bindtextdomain('domain', './locale');
?>

Now the cache is forced to flush every time.

down

surfchen at gmail dot com ¶

14 years ago

As of php 5.3, you can use the following code to get the preferred locale of the http agent.



<?php

$locale = Locale::acceptFromHttp($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE']);

?>

down

smerf(a)druid(d)if(d)uj(d)edu(d)pl ¶

19 years ago

Gettext translations are cached. If you change *.mo files your page may not be translated as expected. Here's simple workaround which does not require restarting webserver (I know, this is just a dirty hack):

<?php
function initialize_i18n($locale) {
    putenv('LANG='.$locale);
    setlocale(LC_ALL,"");
    setlocale(LC_MESSAGES,$locale);
    setlocale(LC_CTYPE,$locale);
    $domains = glob($locales_root.'/'.$locale.'/LC_MESSAGES/messages-*.mo');
    $current = basename($domains[0],'.mo');
    $timestamp = preg_replace('{messages-}i','',$current);
    bindtextdomain($current,$locales_root);
    textdomain($current);
    }
?>

to make this work you have to put your locale inside file messages-[unix_time].mo and use this name (without .mo) as your domain to fool caching mechanism (domain names differ)

msgfmt messages.po -o messages-`date +%s`.mo

for me this works fine (although this is not very elegant solution)

down

nayana at corp - gems dot com ¶

10 years ago

on OSX (10.9.3) and PHP (5.4.24) you need to use full local name including codeset

i.e. for German need to use de_DE.UTF-8 even setlocale returns success when used without .UTF-8 the lookups will not work.

down

iguy at ionsphere dot org ¶

23 years ago

Depending on the implementation of gettext used you might have to call the setlocale(LC_ALL, "") command.  

So your example code would be 



<?php



// Set language to German

putenv ("LANG=de");



// set the locale into the instance of gettext

setlocale(LC_ALL, "");



// Specify location of translation tables

bindtextdomain ("myPHPApp", "./locale");



// Choose domain

textdomain ("myPHPApp");



// Print a test message

print (gettext ("Welcome to My PHP Application"));

?>



NOTE:  If setlocale returns NULL the LANG specified is invalid and "not supported".

down

jmeile at hotmail dot com ¶

10 years ago

I just wanted to say that gettext won't work on WAMP Server 2.4 / 64 Bit, see the thread I posted here:

Title: Gettext doesn't work on WAMP 64 Bits 
http://forum.wampserver.com/read.php?2,120770,120770#msg-120770

I haven't tested with only apache 64 Bit, so, I don't know if the issue is related to apache or WAMP. Anyway, to make it work with WAMP, install the 32 Bit version of WAMP and only do this:

define('LOCALE_DIR', '<root_dir_of_your_po_files>'); //ie: C:/wamp/www/your_app/locale
$locale = '<your_locale>'; //ie: es_CO
$domain = 'your_gettext_domain'; //ie: messages
putenv('LC_ALL=' . $locale);
bindtextdomain($domain, LOCALE_DIR);
textdomain($domain);
echo _('<your_string>'; // ie: Hello world

"setlocale" nor setting the LANG, LANGUAGE, and LC_MESSAGES environment variables seems to be necessary under windows. I got it working by setting "LC_ALL" only.

down

ck at claudiokuenzler dot com ¶

4 years ago

If you come across a situation where the translation works fine on CLI but not on Apache, it may be caused by the Perl Apache module.

Basic translate.php:

<?php
// Set locale
putenv("LC_ALL=de_CH.UTF-8");
putenv("LANGUAGE=");
putenv("LANG=de_CH.UTF-8");
$res = setlocale(LC_ALL, 'de_CH.UTF-8', 'de_CH', 'de');
echo bindtextdomain("homepage", "./locale");
textdomain("homepage");

$results = gettext("My English Text");
if ($results === "My English Text") {
    echo "Original English was returned. Something wrong\n";
} else {
    echo $results;
}
?>

On the CLI the translation works:

$ php7.3 translate.php
Mein deutscher Text.

But not via Apache web server:

$ curl localhost/translate.php
Original English was returned. Something wrong

Disable Perl module and restart Apache:

# a2dismod perl
# systemctl restart apache2

And suddenly the translation works:

$ curl localhost/translate.php
Mein deutscher Text.

The exact reason for this behaviour is (as of right now) unknown to me.

down

jespersaNOSPAM at diku dot NO_SPAM dot dk ¶

22 years ago

There's a good tutorial to the GetText tools used with PHP at http://zez.org/article/articleview/42

The only modification I needed to do was to use the correct ISO-language/country-codes (don't know the ISO number) and call setlocale. 

helloworld.php:



<?php

putenv("LC_ALL=da_DK"); // For danish/Denmark

setlocale(LC_ALL, "");



// ./locale/da/LC_MESSAGES holds the helloworld.mo file

bindtextdomain("helloworld", "./locale");

textdomain("helloworld");



print(gettext("Hello world!"));

?>



I had a lot of trouble getting this to work on Red Hat (Yellow Dog) Linux though.

down

-1

naguissa at foroelectro dot net ¶

1 year ago

I was testing in a self-made NAS (Debian + OpenMediaVault) and I was not getting SOME translations.

Some translations worked OK but some others were ignored.

The problem was caused because I had not added that locales to my NAS locale:

1) Edit file /etc/locale.gen
2) Check if your locale is active (written and uncommented).
3) Execute "locale-gen" as root (or sudo).

So, in short, if you have a Linux system and your translations are ignore check if you have that locale active in your system.

down

-2

bla at taxistop dot be ¶

13 years ago

For me it is sufficient to call setlocale() with a string like "nl_BE" as the second parameter, to make gettext() work. Just plain "nl" was not enough.

Ditto when using an environment variable like LANG: "en", "fr", "nl", "de" are not enough: I have to specify the country, too.

down

-2

saul dot dobney at notanant dot com ¶

5 years ago

putenv(...) can cause hidden problems when upgrading or moving between systems which are difficult to diagnose.

On one Linux server we had the following working perfectly with setlocale

putenv("LANG=$locale");

We switched servers and found gettext wouldn't work despite having all the same locale files and settings

The recommendation to switch to

putenv("LC_ALL=$locale");

didn't fix the problem.

However,

putenv("LANGUAGE=$locale");

did. So if you have problems, check all three settings.

down

-3

simen at nconel dot no ¶

12 years ago

gettext returns the headers from .mo files
if the message parameter is set to empty.

So if you are for example using Smarty blocks, make sure that the values given checks if the text has content or else your text will have a bunch of headers printing.

If you are putting a variable to the gettext, like so:
_($text);
you are better of making another function like this:
<?php
function __($text){
if(empty($text)) return "";
else gettext($text);
}
?>

down

-2

florent at eledo dot com ¶

19 years ago

Take care when extracting the strings from the source files : if your source files are not encoded in ascii, then xgettext must be used with the --from-code option, and the generated .po file is *always* UTF-8 (even if you used a different --from-code charset). 

The usage of gettext will not work later on strings which include non ascii caracters. For make it working, you have to translate the .po file to your proper charset with msgconv.

Example :
my source files are encoded in iso-8859-1
$ xgettext --from-code=iso-8859-1 -n *.php -o myapp.po
==> myapp.po is in UTF-8 (and generated .mo files will not work with gettext). 
I have to convert it to iso-8859-1 before translating :
$ msgconv --to-code=iso-8859-1 myapp.po -o myapp.po
...and now translate the file.

down

-4

adino at adino dot sk ¶

21 years ago

If you 're experiencing problems like gettext() is not working and you're getting translated text only occassionaly use: unset LANG before starting apache.
Next thing is that you have to restart apache after you 've changed .mo files because they're treated something like shared libraries.
I've only tested this with Linux (Sourcemage Linux distro, Mandrake) but it might be true for others as well.

down

-5

vinaykuruvila at gmail dot com ¶

18 years ago

If like me, you are stuck with making a lot of code localizable, you have to go through all your php files and wrap all srings in _("string"). Here's an elisp function which can help you out. 

This function enables you to highlight some text in an emacs buffer and make it a localizable string using the keyboard shortcut C-l (Ctrl and l). If the first character highlighted is " or ', then it assumes the text is in php-context and changes it to: _(HIGHLIGHTED_TEXT). Otherwise it assumes the text is in html-context and changes it to <?=_('HIGHLIGHTED_TEXT')?> 

The shortcut C-k can be used for translating parts of php strings which contain html tabs. We dont want to translate the entire string including the tabs, so we highlight just the substring that needs to be translated and use C-k. 

To use it, do either of:
Copy and paste the following code into your .emacs file. This would permanently associate the keyboard shortcut C-l with this function. 
Save the code in a new file ending with the .el extension. Evaluate it using M-x eval-buffer. This makes the C-l keyboard shortcut only last for the current Emacs session. 

Code
;author: Vinay Kuruvila March 01 2006
;updated to handle php strings containing html tabs 

;makes the text starting at left and ending at right in the
;current buffer a localizable string, assuming that the 
;string is within php context
(defun make-localizable-string-in-php-context(left right)
(goto-char left)
(insert "_(")
(goto-char (+ right 2))
(insert ")")
)

;makes the text starting at left and ending at right in the
;current buffer a localizable string, assuming that the 
;string is within html context
(defun make-localizable-string-in-html-context(left right)
(goto-char left)
(insert "<?= _('")
(goto-char (+ right 7))
(insert "')?>")
)

;makes the highlighted text a localizable string
;uses php-context localization if the first char highlighted 
;is " or '
;otherwise uses html-context localization
(defun make-localizable-string()
(interactive)

;find the positions of the left and right ends of 
;the highlighted text
(if (> (point) (mark)) 
(progn 
(setq right (point)) 
(setq left (mark))
) 
(progn 
(setq right (mark)) 
(setq left (point))
)
)

;determine php-context or html-context and dispatch
(if (or (char-equal (char-after left) ?\") (char-equal (char-after left) ?'))
(make-localizable-string-in-php-context left right)
(make-localizable-string-in-html-context left right)
)
(deactivate-mark)
)

;to handle php strings which contain html tabs
;we dont want to translate the html tabs
(defun make-localizable-string-within-php-string ()
(interactive)

;find the positions of the left and right ends of 
;the highlighted text
(if (> (point) (mark)) 
(progn 
(setq right (point)) 
(setq left (mark))
) 
(progn 
(setq right (mark)) 
(setq left (point))
)
)
(goto-char left)
(insert "\". _(\"")
(goto-char (+ right 6))
(insert "\").\"") 
(deactivate-mark)
)

;assigns a keyboard shortcut
(global-set-key "\C-l" 'make-localizable-string)
(global-set-key "\C-k" 'make-localizable-string-within-php-string)

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gettext

Description

Parameters

Return Values

Examples

Notes

See Also

Found A Problem?

User Contributed Notes 17 notes