FastGettext

GetText but 4 times faster, simple, clean namespace (7 vs 34) and threadsave!

Setup

sudo gem install grosser-fast_gettext -s http://gems.github.com/

Tell Gettext where your mo-files lie:

#e.g. for locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/my_app.mo
FastGettext.add_text_domain('my_app',:path=>'locale')

Choose text domain, and locale for translation

FastGettext.text_domain = 'my_app'
FastGettext.available_locales = ['de','en','fr','en_US','en_UK'] # only allow these locales to be set (optional)
FastGettext.locale = 'de'

Start translating

include FastGettext::Translation
_('Car') == 'Auto'
_('not-found') == 'not-found'
s_('Namespace|no-found') == 'not-found'
n_('Axis','Axis',3) == 'Achsen' #German plural of Axis

Speed

50_000 translations: Ideal: (primitive Hash lookup)

small translation file:
1.100000   0.180000   1.280000 (  1.287230)
mapped: 5832K    writeable/private: 3016K    shared: 28K

large translation file:
1.150000   0.150000   1.300000 (  1.296114)
mapped: 5832K    writeable/private: 3016K    shared: 28K

FastGettext:

small translation file:
3.980000   0.430000   4.410000 (  4.407260)
mapped: 5852K    writeable/private: 3036K    shared: 28K

large translation file:
4.070000   0.450000   4.520000 (  4.515585)
mapped: 5972K    writeable/private: 3156K    shared: 28K

GetText:

small translation file:
16.280000   1.340000  17.620000 ( 17.630391)
mapped: 8976K    writeable/private: 5944K    shared: 28K

large translation file:
16.590000   1.430000  18.020000 ( 18.042926)
mapped: 9024K    writeable/private: 5992K    shared: 28K

Thread Safety and Rails

text_domains is not stored thread-save, so that they can be added inside the environment.rb,
and do not need to be readded for every thread (parsing takes time...).

Setting available_locales,text_domain or locale will not work inside the evironment.rb, since it runs in a different thread then e.g. controllers, so set them inside your application_controller.

#environment.rb after initializers
FastGettext.add_text_domain('accounting',:path=>'locale')
FastGettext.add_text_domain('frontend',:path=>'locale')
...

#application_controller.rb
class ApplicationController ...
  include FastGettext::Translation
  before_filter :set_locale
  def set_locale
    FastGettext.available_locales = ['de','en',...]
    FastGettext.text_domain = 'frontend'
    sessions[:locale] = I18n.locale = FastGettext.locale = params[:locale] || sessions[:locale] || 'en'
  end

#application_helper.rb
module ApplicationHelper
  include FastGettext::Translation
  ...

Try the gettext_i18n_rails plugin, it simplifies the setup.

Updating translations

ATM you have to use the original GetText to create and manage your po/mo-files.

Author

Mofile parsing from Masao Mutoh, see vendor/README

Michael Grosser
grosser.michael@gmail.com
Hereby placed under public domain, do what you want, just do not hold me accountable...