Traco

Build Status

Translatable attributes for Rails 3 and 4 (Ruby 1.9+), stored in the model table itself.

Inspired by Iain Hecker's translatable_columns.

To store translations outside the model, see Sven Fuchs' Globalize.

Usage

Say you want Post#title and Post#body to support both English and Swedish values.

Write a migration to get database columns with locale suffixes, e.g. title_sv and title_en, like:

class CreatePosts < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    create_table :posts do |t|
      t.string :title_sv, :title_en
      t.text :body_sv, :body_en

      t.timestamps
    end
  end
end

Don't create a database column named title without a suffix, since Traco will define a method with that name.

If you use a locale format like pt-BR, the column name would be title_pt_br.

Declare the attributes in the model:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  translates :title, :body
end

You can still use your accessors like title_sv and title_sv= in forms, validations and other code, but you also get:

#title: Shows the title in the current locale. If blank, falls back to default locale. Otherwise nil.

#title=: Assigns the title to the column for the current locale, if present. Raises if the column doesn't exist.

.human_attribute_name(:title_sv): Extends this standard method to return "Title (Swedish)" if you have a translation key i18n.languages.sv = "Swedish" and "Title (SV)" otherwise. Rails uses this method to build validation error messages and form labels.

.translatable_attributes: Returns an array like [:title, :body].

.locale_columns(:title): Returns an array like [:title_sv, :title_en] sorted with default locale first and then alphabetically. Suitable for looping in forms:

<% Post.locale_columns(:title).each do |column| %>
  <p>
    <%= form.label column %>
    <%= form.text_field column %>
  </p>
<% end %>

Or perhaps for things like:

attr_accessible *locale_columns(:title)

validates *locale_columns(:title), :uniqueness => true

You can also pass multiple attributes if you like:

attr_accessible *locale_columns(:title, :body)

The return value will be sorted like [:title_sv, :title_en, :body_sv, :body_en].

.current_locale_column(:title): Returns :title_sv if :sv is the current locale. Suitable for some SQL queries, such as sorting.

.locales_for_attribute(:title): Returns an array like [:sv, :en] sorted with default locale first and then alphabetically.

And the equivalent methods for body, of course.

Please note that your translates :title, :body declaration must be called before you call locale_columns. Otherwise you will get an error like "NoMethodError: undefined method `locale_columns' for #<Class:0x00000003f69188>".

Fallbacks

By default, Traco will fall back to the default locale if there is no translation in the current locale.

You can specify e.g. translates :title, fallback: false to never fall back and instead return nil.

You can specify e.g. translates :title, fallback: :any to fall back first to the default locale, then to any other locale.

You can override the default fallback strategy with a parameter passed to the reader: post.title(fallback: :any).

If you need to declare the default locale fallback, do post.title(fallback: :default).

Overriding methods

Methods are defined in an included module, so you can just override them and call Traco's implementation with super:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  translates :title

  def title
    super.reverse
  end
end

Installation

Add this to your Gemfile:

gem 'traco'

Then run

bundle

to install it.

Running the tests

bundle
rake

Benchmark

ruby benchmarks/overhead.rb

Contributors

  • Henrik Nyh
  • Andrii Malyshko
  • Tobias Bohwalli
  • Mario Alberto Chavez
  • Philip Arndt
  • Leung Ho Kuen
  • Fernando Morgenstern
  • Tomáš Horáček
  • Joakim Kolsjö

Credits and license

By Barsoom under the MIT license:

Copyright © 2012–2014 Barsoom AB

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.