This document discusses internationalization (i18n) in Ruby on Rails applications. It provides an overview of i18n, including how Rails supports it out of the box, how locale files are loaded and used, and an example of setting the locale based on URL parameters. The document also discusses some benefits of i18n like reaching a wider audience and improving code structure. Additional resources on Rails i18n are provided at the end.

1. rambling on rails’ i18n
décousue discussion à propos de rails i18n

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3. rambling on rails’ i18n
décousue discussion à propos de rails i18n

4. i18n l10n- wtf?
internationalisation is the process of preparing your
application for localisation
localisation is the process of providing locale / language
specific content within your internationalised application
you internationalise so that you can localise

5. Internationalisation in Rails
baked in, which is great!
easy to get started with
plenty of documentation

6. Contrived Overview!

7. Where the magic happens
Rails automatically loads any .rb or .yml files in config/
locales and makes them available to the i18n and l10n APIs.
rails-i18n gem will give you locale files for a fair few
languages including translations of Active Record’s error
messages, saving you effort

8. Boilerplate
#in config/locales/en.yml
en:
good_afternoon: good afternoon
#in config/locales/fr.yml
fr:
good_afternoon: bonjour
#in config/locales/ja.yml
ja:
good_afternoon: こにちわ

9. Boilerplate
#in config/routes.rb
Example::Application.routes.draw do
root :to => ‘example#greet`
end
#in app/controller/example_controller
class ExampleController < ApplicationController
def greet
render :text => t(:good_afternoon)
end
end

10. What’s that given us?
Three different locales, each with a localised value for the
internationalised key ‘:good_afternoon’
A controller which will serve up this localised value when
someone visits it
The default locale is ‘en’ so the user will see ‘good
afternoon’

11. Make them go
#in app/controller/example_controller
class ExampleController < ApplicationController
def greet
I18n.locale = params[:locale] || ‘en’
render :text => t(:good_afternoon)
end
end

12. Make them go
#in app/controller/example_controller
class ExampleController < ApplicationController
def greet
I18n.locale = params[:locale] || ‘en’
render :text => t(:good_afternoon)
end
end

13. So now what?
http://localhost:3000/?locale=fr would see “bonjour”
http://localhost:3000/?locale=jp would see “こにちわ”
Anyone else would see “good afternoon”

14. So that’s the basics

15. It’s actually quite hard

16. Here’s the fluffy bit

17. Whys and Whatfors
more people don’t speak English than do - why limit your
audience?
being forced to think about how information will be
presented in various locales is a fun-fun challenge
it forces you to move view-level detail out into dictionaries
and away from your models and such - this is good!

18. Whys and Whatfors
it’s hard work to internationalise everything but really
rewarding if you have the need to do it
you’ll know yourself if the project you’re working with needs
to be i18n’d
personally, I always default to i18ning everything, but that’s
because I’m a masochist

19. Further Reading
Rails i18n guide: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/i18n.html
Rails i18n locales repository https://github.com/svenfuchs/
rails-i18n
Ruby i18n wiki: http://ruby-i18n.org/wiki

20. Got any questions?
I’ve not covered a lot, ask about specifics!

21. ありがとう！
@ryanstenhouse on Twitter
@HHRy on GitHub
http://ryanstenhouse.eu