How to make translatable laravel app
Tags: laravel, php, webdev, tutorial
Published: 2021-10-23 05:27:54

Use these methods to easily make translatable on model attributes in Laravel

This article will explain the different ways to automatically translate eloquent model attributes while accessing or retrieving or create them.

There are several ways to achieve this, and we’ll discuss them along with their quirks in this article.

There are many packages do this work, my favorite package is https://github.com/spatie/laravel-translatable.

This package have many methods the will give us an easy way to translate selected attributes.

## Prerequisites and setup
This tutorial assumes you are fairly experienced with Laravel (note that this tutorial uses Laravel 7.x).

Of course, to begin, we have to have our development environment set up. First, install the package:

You can install the package via composer:
```
composer require spatie/laravel-translatable
```

If you want to have another fallback_locale than the app fallback locale `(see config/app.php)`, you could publish the config file:

```
php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Spatie\Translatable\TranslatableServiceProvider"
```

In your config folder you will find file name : translatable.php

```php
<?php

return [
    /*
     * If a translation has not been set for a given locale, use this locale instead.
     */
    'fallback_locale' => 'en',
];
```

## Making a model translatable
The required steps to make a model translatable are:
First, you need to add the `Spatie\Translatable\HasTranslations-trait`.
Next, you should create a public property $translatable which holds an array with all the names of attributes you wish to make translatable.

Finally, you should make sure that all translatable attributes are set to the text-datatype in your database. If your database supports json-columns, use that.

Here’s an example of a prepared model:
```php
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Spatie\Translatable\HasTranslations;

class Post extends Model
{
    use HasTranslations;

    public $translatable = ['name', 'text'];
}
```

now we need to select the attributes that we need to translate it:
```public $translatable = ['name', 'text'];```

Available methods
Getting a translation
The easiest way to get a translation for the current locale is to just get the property for the translated attribute. For example (given that `name` is a translatable attribute):
```$post->name; // get name attribute```

You can also use this method:
```public function getTranslation(string $attributeName, string $locale, bool $useFallbackLocale = true) : string```

this method well get `name` attribute translated by locale language you choose.

## Getting all translations
You can get all translations by calling `getTranslations()` without an argument:

`$post->getTranslations();`

Or you can use the accessor :
`$post->translations`

## Setting a translation
The easiest way to set a translation for the current locale is to just set the property for a translatable attribute. For example (given that name is a translatable attribute):

`$post->name = 'new post'`

that will generate a json text like this : `{"en": "new post"} `inside name column in database table.
for create multi translation:
`$post->name = ['en' => 'new post', 'ar' => 'موضوع جديد'];`

To set a translation for a specific locale you can use this method:

`public function setTranslation(string $attributeName, string $locale, string $value)`

To actually save the translation, don’t forget to save your model.

```php
$post->setTranslation('name', 'en', 'Updated name in English');
$post->setTranslation('name', 'ar', 'Updated name in Arabic')
$post->save();
```

Forgetting a translation
You can forget a translation for a specific field:

`public function forgetTranslation(string $attributeName, string $locale)`

example :
`$post->forgetTranslation('name', 'ar')`

You can forget all translations for a specific locale:
`public function forgetAllTranslations(string $locale)`

example :

`$post->forgetAllTranslations('ar')`

Getting all translations in one go

`public function getTranslations(string $attributeName): array`

example :

`$post->getTranslations('name')`

Getting the specified translations in one go

You can filter the translations by passing an array of locales:

`public function getTranslations(string $attributeName, array $allowedLocales): array`

example :

`$post->getTranslations('name', ['en', 'ar'])`

Replace translations in one go

You can replace all the translations for a single key using this method:

```php
public function replaceTranslations(string $key, array $translations)
$newTranslations = ['en' => 'hello'];

$post->replaceTranslations('hello', $newTranslations);
$post->getTranslations(); // ['en' => 'hello']
```

## Setting the model locale

The default locale used to translate models is the application locale, however it can sometimes be handy to use a custom locale.

```php
$post = Post::firstOrFail()->setLocale('en')
$post->name; // Will return `en` translation
$post->name = "hello"; // will set the `en` translation
```
Alternatively, you can use usingLocale static method:
```php
// Will automatically set the `en` translation
$newsItem = Post::usingLocale('en')->create([
    'name' => 'hello',
]);
```

##Creating models

You can immediately set translations when creating a model. Here’s an example:

```php
Post::create([
   'name' => [
      'en' => 'Name in English',
      'ar' => 'الأسم بالعربي'
   ],
]);
```

Querying translatable attributes
If you’re using MySQL 5.7 or above, it’s recommended that you use the json data type for housing translations in the db. This will allow you to query these columns like this:

```php
Post::where('name->en', 'Name in English')->get();
```
you can set translation using `app()->setLocale('en')` , this an easy way to get translation.
```php
app()->setLocale('en')
$post->name; // will get 'en' translation
$post->name = 'hello' // will set 'en' translation
```

resource : https://github.com/spatie/laravel-translatable