PHP Cookbook

16.10. Using gettext

Problem

You want a comprehensive system to create, manage, and deploy message catalogs.

Solution

Use PHP’s gettext extension, which allows you to use GNU’s gettext utilities:

bindtextdomain('gnumeric','/usr/share/locale');
textdomain('gnumeric');

$languages = array('en_CA','da_DK','de_AT','fr_FR');
foreach ($languages as $language) {
  setlocale(LC_ALL, $language);
  print gettext(" Unknown formula")."\n";
}

Discussion

gettext is a set of tools that makes it easier for your application to produce multilingual messages. Compiling PHP with the --with-gettext option enables functions to retrieve the appropriate text from gettext-format message catalogs, and there are a number of external tools to edit the message catalogs.

With gettext, messages are divided into domains, and all messages for a particular domain are stored in the same file. bindtextdomain( ) tells gettext where to find the message catalog for a particular domain. A call to:

bindtextdomain('gnumeric','/usr/share/locale')

indicates that the message catalog for the gnumeric domain in the en_CA locale is in the file /usr/share/locale/en_CA/LC_MESSAGES/gnumeric.mo.

The textdomain('gnumeric') function sets the default domain to gnumeric. Calling gettext( ) retrieves a message from the default domain. There are other functions, such as dgettext( ) , that let you retrieve a message from a different domain. When gettext( ) (or dgettext( )) is called, it returns the appropriate message for the current locale. ...