Route Localize

Rails 4 engine to translate routes using locale files and subdomains.

Install

In your Rails application's Gemfile add:

gem "route_localize", github: "sunny/route_localize"

Install the plugin by running:

$ bundle

Scopes

Route Localize adds two routing scopes you can use on your routes:

• localize: your locale is the first thing in the path (http://example.com/en/foo)
• localize_subdomain: your locale is your subdomain (http://en.example.com/foo)

Usage

In your config/routes.rb, localize some routes with one of the scopes. For example:

scope localize: [:en, :fr] do
  get 'trees/new', to: 'trees#new'
end
root 'pages#index'

Create a config/locales/routes.yml with translations for each part of your routes under the routes key. For example:

fr:
  routes:
    trees: arbres
    new: nouveau

With this example you would have the following routes defined:

        Prefix Verb URI Pattern               Controller#Action
  trees_new_en GET /trees/new(.:format)      trees#new {:subdomain=>:en}
  trees_new_fr GET /arbres/nouveau(.:format) trees#new {:subdomain=>:fr}

You also get the trees_new_path and trees_new_url helpers that will call trees_new_en or trees_new_fr depending on the current locale.

Language switcher

If you want to be able to switch to the current page in another language add the following inside your app/helpers/application_helper.rb:

module ApplicationHelper
  include RouteLocalizeHelper
end

You can then use the locale_switch_url or locale_switch_subdomain_url helpers in your views:

<%= link_to "fr", locale_switch_url("fr") %>
<%= link_to "en", locale_switch_url("en") %>

Change the parameters in your switcher

If your params are different depending on the language, you can override the switcher's params by creating a route_localize_options method that takes the locale as a parameter.

For example if you would like to switch from http://en.example.org/products/keyboard to http://fr.example.org/produits/clavier, where keyboard and clavier are the :id parameter.

In this case you might already have this in controller:

class ProductsController < ApplicationController
  def show
    if I18n.locale = "fr"
      @tree = Product.find_by_name_fr(params[:id])
    else
      @tree = Product.find_by_name_en(params[:id])
    end
  end
end

Then you would need to add this inside your controller:

  helper_method :route_localize_path_options
  def route_localize_path_options(locale)
    { id: (locale == "fr" ? @tree.name_fr : @tree.name_en) }
  end

Caveats

Rails' url_for cannot find the translation url automatically, prefer to use the _path and _url methods instead.

If you can't, one way around is to use RouteLocalize.translate_path.

For example :

RouteLocalize.translate_path(url_for(controller: 'trees', action: 'index'),
                             I18n.locale)

If you are using subdomains you should add by_subdomain: true option.

Development

You may help by submitting issues, creating pull requests, talking about the gem or by saying thanks.

Other gems to translate Rails routes

The following gems could also be a good match for your project:

• translate_routes
• route_translator
• rails-translate-routes
• routing-filter

Route Localize is different from these solutions because it:

• can add a constraint to the subdomain instead of relying on the locale beeing in the url (en/… fr/)
• plays well with gems that introduce extra locales, routes you don't want to translate, or reload routes before i18n is loaded (activeadmin for example)
• includes a language switcher helper that returns the correct url in each other language