FastGettext

GetText but 9.17 times faster, simple, clean namespace (7 vs 34) and threadsave!

Example Rails application

Setup

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

Or from source:

git clone git://github.com/grosser/fast_gettext.git
cd fast_gettext && rake install

Generate .po or .mo files using GetText parser (example tasks at gettext_i18n_rails)

Tell Gettext where your .mo or .po files lie:

#e.g. for locale/de/my_app.po and locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/my_app.mo
#add :type=>:po and it will read directly from po files (not recommended for production since po-parsing can crash!)
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

Disable translation errors(like no text domain setup) while doing e.g. console session / testing

FastGettext.silence_errors

Performance

50_000 translations speed / memory small translation file <-> large translation file

Baseline: (doing nothing in a loop)
0.410000s / 2904K <->

Ideal: (primitive Hash lookup)
1.150000s / 3016K <-> 1.130000s / 3016K

FastGettext:
1.800000s / 3040K <-> 1.750000s / 3040K

GetText:
16.510000s / 5900K <-> 16.400000s / 6072K

ActiveSupport I18n::Backend::Simple :
31.880000s / 10028K <->

Thread Safety and Rails

Parsed text_domains are 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...).

Rails

Try the gettext_i18n_rails plugin, it simplifies the setup.

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.set_locale(params[:locale] || sessions[:locale] || request.env['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'] || 'en')
  end

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

Updating translations

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

Advanced features

Abnormal pluralisation

Pluralisation rules can be set directly via a lambda (see code/specs), or by using the Gettext plural definition (see spec/locale/en/test_plural.po or Plural expressions for all languages.

Plugins

Want a yml, xml, database version ? Write your own TranslationRepository!

#fast_gettext/translation_repository/xxx.rb
module FastGettext
  module TranslationRepository
    class Wtf
      define initialize(name,options), available_locales, [key], plural(*msgids)
    end
  end
end

Author

Mo/Po-file 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...