Laravel Translatable

Single-table polymorphic translations for Laravel Eloquent models.

Installation

composer require pictastudio/translatable

Laravel auto-discovers the package service provider, so no manual provider registration is required.

Publish the config and migrations:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=translatable-config
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=translatable-migrations
php artisan migrate

Core Concept

All translations are stored in one table (translations) with a polymorphic relation:

• translatable_type
• translatable_id
• locale
• attribute
• value

This allows translating any model using the same structure.

Usage

Add the trait and declare translated attributes:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use PictaStudio\Translatable\Translatable;

class Post extends Model
{
    use Translatable;

    public array $translatedAttributes = ['title', 'summary'];

    protected $fillable = ['slug', 'title', 'summary'];
}

Store translations:

$post = Post::create([
    'slug' => 'welcome',
    'title:en' => 'Welcome',
    'title:it' => 'Benvenuto',
]);

Read translations:

app()->setLocale('it');

$post->title;          // Benvenuto (current locale)
$post->{'title:en'};   // Welcome

Locale keyed mass assignment is also supported:

Post::create([
    'slug' => 'roadmap',
    'en' => ['title' => 'Roadmap'],
    'it' => ['title' => 'Tabella di marcia'],
]);

Locale Header Middleware

The package includes PictaStudio\Translatable\Middleware\SetLocaleFromHeader.

When enabled, it reads a request header (default: Locale) and sets app()->setLocale(...) only if the value is valid according to configured locales.

Config keys:

• register_locale_middleware (default: true)
• locale_header (default: Locale)
• locales (valid locale list)

Configuration

See /config/translatable.php for:

• locales and locale separator
• fallback behavior
• translation model and locale key
• base-column syncing for translated attributes (sync_base_attributes)
• middleware registration toggle and header name

With sync_base_attributes=true (default), translated values are also synced to matching model columns when they exist. This allows keeping non-null translated columns in your tables (for example name) without requiring nullable schema changes.