Dojo: The Definitive Guide

Internationalizing a Module

Let's assume that you've gotten with the times and expanded on your magic genie module from the "Building a Magic Genie Example Module" in Chapter 2 to produce a psychic module. Let's assume that your default language is English, and you've determined that the first additional language you should support is Spanish.

Layout on Disk

Like any other module, your psychic readings module should simply be a source file contained in a typical directory structure:

dtdg/
  psychic/
    Psychic.js /* Lots of useful stuff in here */

Not surprisingly, an incredible utility provided by your psychic module is the ability to predict the future. As such, users of your module might stick it in a page and use it like so:

<script type="text/javascript">
    dojo.require("dtdg.psychic");
    dojo.addOnLoad(function(  ) {
      dtdg.psychic.predictFuture(  );
    });
</script>

Although there's an awful lot of real magic that happens in the predictFuture function, the part that we're interested in at the moment is where a String value actually gets written to the screen because that's where the internationalization work happens. As it turns out, the output from your module gets written out with the following logic:

dojo.byId("reading").innerHTML = predictFuture( /* magic */ );

As a first stab at internationalization, start out with plain old English and plain old Spanish, ignoring any particular dialects. Given this decision, the nls directory might look something like the following:

dtdg/ psychic/ Psychic.js ...