Simple AR Localizer

SimpleARLocalizer is a gem that—hopefully—provides a slightly easier way of writing localisations for ActiveRecord models when splitting things out into per-model files. Out of the box, it provides hooks for a model’s human name, human attribute names, and both per-model and per-attribute error messaging.

This means that instead of having:

# config/locales/foo/en.yml
en:
  activerecord:
    models:
      foo: model name

    attributes:
      foo:
        attr_one: attribute name

    errors:
      models:
        foo:
          attributes:
            attr_one:
              blank: You need to fill this in

You can instead use:

# config/locales/foo/en.rb
SimpleARLocalizer::transform( Foo, :en, {
  name: 'model name',
  attributes: {
    attr_one: {
      name: 'attribute name',
      errors: {
        blank: 'You need to fill this in'
      }
    }
  }
})

It’s still not exactly pretty, but it’s a little more descriptive and you’re less likely to put things in the wrong place/get your indents wrong.

Installation and using

Add the following to your Gemfile and run `bundle install`.

gem 'simple_ar_localizer', '~> 1.0'

Then, add the following in your config/application.rb:

# Also allow nested locale files
config.i18n.load_path += Dir[Rails.root.join('config', 'locales', '**', '*.{rb,yml}')]

You should now be able to start using SimpleARLocalizer to generate your localisations, however it is important to note that this can only be used in Ruby files, rather than the YAML files to which you may be used.

Usage

The main entry point is SimpleARLocalizer::transform( model, language, l10n_data ), which takes three arguments:

model (String or Constant)

the model you’re localising, either as a string (eg: 'Foo') or as a constant

language (Symbol)

ISO-639 language code of the language you’re providing a localisation for (eg: :hu)

l10n_data (Hash)

the localisation data itself.

The format of the localisation data is described in its own file

Custom data formatting

By design, this gem should cover ~90% of your localisation needs, but it also supports custom data if you need a little extra control.

A quick note about dialect/spelling

Keen observers will note that I use US English (-ize) in the code, and British English (-ise) throughout comments and documentation: this is intentional.

For better or worse, the world seems to have settled on US English as the de-facto standard for writing software and I have honoured (honored?) that in this gem. That said, however, it feels ‘wrong’ for me to use it when writing continuous prose, thus reverting to British English elsewhere. Sorry!

Version History

1.0.1 (August 25th, 2020)

Minor bump to support ActiveRecord 6.×.

1.0.0 (May 23rd, 2018)

Extraction from the project whence it came and turning into a standalone gem.

#include 'sales_pitch.h'

When I’m not hacking at random gems, I’m a freelance web developer specialising in all things front-end, based in the beautiful city of Cardiff, UK. I’m usually kept fairly busy with project work, but I’m always on the lookout for new people to do cool stuff with. Drop me a line – I’d love to hear from you!