SYNOPSIS

A language specific sub-class

package MyApp::Lexicon::pl;

sub quant {
    # Override default plural handling to cope
    # with the Polish form of plurals, ie:
    # 1   -> single
    # 2-4 -> "few"
    # 5-  -> plural
}

Config file

plugins:
    Lexicon:
        namespace:      MyApp::Lexicon
        path:           languages
        auto_detect:    1
        default:        en
        func:           [l, _]
        session_name:   lang
        param_name:     lang
        langs:
              en:       "English"
              en-us:    "US English"
              da:       "Dansk"
              de:       "Deutsch"
              pl:       "Polish"

In your code

package MyApp::Handler;

use Dancer qw(:syntax);
use Dancer::Plugin::Lexicon;

print language;
# English

print language_tag;
# en

my $installed = installed_langs;
my $number    = keys %$installed;

print _('I know [quant,_1,language,languages]', $number);
# I know 5 languages

print set_language('fr','de_DE','en');
# Deutsch


get '/' => sub {
    debug "Auto-detected language is ".language;

};

DESCRIPTION

Dancer::Plugin::Lexicon uses Locale::Maketext::Lexicon to provide I18N functionality to your Dancer application.

Translations are stored in PO or MO (compiled PO) gettext files in the languages/ dir. You can generate or update your PO files by automatically extracting translatable strings from your code and templates with xgettext.pl.

It allows you to add language sub-classes which can handle grammatical differences in that language (such as the Polish example given in the "SYNOPSIS").

The user's preferred language can be auto-detected from their browser settings, and the current language is automatically stored in the user's session. Including lang=$lang_tag in the query string change the user's language.

CONFIGURATION

namespace

The only required configuration is namespace, which should be the base class in your application that you will use for I18N. The class itself doesn't have to exist, but will be loaded if it does exist:

plugins:
    Lexicon:
        namespace:  MyApp::Lexicon

See "LANGUAGE SUB-CLASSES" for more.

path

The path option (default languages/) allows you to set a different path for where to find your PO files.

default

The default language to use. If not specifified, it defaults to en. The language must exist in your languages/ directory. If a translation doesn't exist in the current language, it will be translated using the default language instead.

langs

If not specified, then any PO files in your languages/ directory will be loaded.

Alternatively, you can specify a list of language tags:

langs:
    en
    en_US
    pt
    pt_BR

The name of each language will be derived from "name" in I18N::LangTags::List which provides the name in English.

You can provide your own names as follows:

langs:
    en:     English
    en_US:  US English
    de:     Deutsch
    it:     Italiano

A PO file must exist for all listed languages.

func

One or more function names which will be exported to your modules and templates to localize text. For instance:

func:   x

Would allow you to do:

x('Localize me')

And:

func:   [l, _]

Would allow you to do:

_('Localize me');
l('Localize me');

session_name

The session_name param (default "lang") is the session key used to store the user's current language (if sessions are available).

param_name

The param_name param (default "lang") is the query string parameter used to change the user's current language.

auto_detect

If you don't want Dancer::Plugin::Lexicon to automatically detect the user's preferred language from their browser headers, then set:

auto_detect: 0

FUNCTIONS

set_language

set_language() accepts a list of language tags, and chooses the best matching available language. For instance, if you have these languages available: 'en_GB','fr':

set_language('en_US','en_AU');
# British English

set_language('it','de');
# French (closer to Italian)

If no suitable language is found, then it will set the default language, which you can also force with:

set_language;

language

The name of the current language as specified in "installed_langs".

language_tag

The language tag of the current language.

installed_langs

A hashref containing all installed languages. The keys are language tags, and the values are the names as specified in your config, or as derived from "name" in I18N::LangTags::List.

localize

The localize function will translate the passed in phrase using the current language:

localize('Translate me', @any_args);

Also, and functions that you specify in /func will also be exported as aliases of "localize"

LANGUAGE SUB-CLASSES

No .pm files need to exist, but if they do exist, they will be loaded and setup correctly.

For instance, the class specified in "namespace" (eg MyClass::Lexicon) is loaded or inflated, and setup to inherit from Locale::Maketext. If you load fr.po then it tries to load MyClass::Lexicon::fr if it exists, otherwise it inflates it. This class inherits from MyClass::Lexicon.

If you want to override any functionality for a particular language, then you can create the file lib/MyClass/Lexicon/fr.pm and add your overrides in there.

Also, you could have (eg) MyClass::Lexicon::pt_br (Brazilian Portuguese), which is a subclass of MyClass::Lexicon::pt (Portuguese). Any translations that aren't found in pt_br.po will be looked for in pt.po, before finally failing over to the default language.

SUPPORT

You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

perldoc Dancer::Plugin::Lexicon

You can also look for information at:

• GitHub

  http://github.com/clintongormley/Dancer-Plugin-Lexicon

• CPAN Ratings

  http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/Dancer-Plugin-Lexicon

• Search MetaCPAN

  https://metacpan.org/module/Dancer::Plugin::Lexicon