Pico MultiLanguage

Pico plugin for multi-language support.

• Usage
• Getting Started
  • Install
    • Integration with other plugins
  • Configuration settings
  • Content translation
  • Template variables defined for Twig
  • Theme translation
  • Changing the site title automatically
  • Changing the page date formatted automatically
• Changelog
  • 1.0
• License

Usage

A plugin to support content and theme in different languages.

You can define the languages available for your site and translate your content pages and your theme into those languages.

---

NOTES:

• You will need to use the same language codes wherever you need them.
• An IETF language tag like en is suggested.
• In all our examples we use the languages en and fr.

---

Getting Started

Install

Add the plugin in the plugins directory of your Pico installation (e.g. /var/www/html/pico/plugins/)

• using Composer composer require iridescent-dev/pico-multilanguage-plugin
• or manually by uploading the MultiLanguage.php file to your plugins directory

Pico MultiLanguage plugin requires PHP >=7.0.

Integration with other plugins

The MultiLanguage plugin filters the list of pages to keep only pages in the current language. If you are using a plugin which processes the list of pages, it may be necessary to add MultiLanguage to it as a dependency.
Take the example of Pagination: filtering pages by language must be done before paging.

You must add or edit the following line in this plugin:

class Pagination extends AbstractPicoPlugin {
	protected $dependsOn = array("MultiLanguage");
  ...

Configuration settings

You can change the default configuration by adding values to your config file. Here are the options available and what they do.

• default_language - The default language. - Default value: en.
• languages - The list of available languages and their display names. - Default value: 'en' => 'English'.
• language_dir - The path to the language directory. - Default value: language/ (e.g. /var/www/html/pico/language/).
  See Theme translation.
• site_titles - The list of translated titles of your website. - Default value: (unset).
  See Changing the site title automatically.
• date_formats - The list of date formats by language. - Default value: (unset).
  See Changing the page date formatted automatically.
• date_locales - The list of date locales by language. - Default value: (unset).
  See Changing the page date formatted automatically.

For reference, these values are set in config/config.yml using the following format:

##
# MultiLanguage support
#
default_language: en                # The default language.

languages:                          # The list of available languages and their display names.
    en: English
    fr: Français

language_dir: language/             # The path to the language directory.

site_titles:                        # The list of translated titles of your website.
    en: Website title               #   English title of your website
    fr: Titre du site web           #   French title of your website

date_formats:                       # The list of date formats by language.
                                    #     See https://php.net/manual/en/function.strftime.php for more info
    en: %B %d, %Y                   #   e.g. september 23, 2021
    fr: %d %B %Y                    #   e.g. 23 septembre 2021

date_locales:                       # The list of date locales by language.
                                    #     See https://php.net/manual/en/function.setlocale.php for more info
    en: en_US.UTF-8
    fr: fr_FR.UTF-8

Content translation

The plugin introduces Language and pid page headers. Essentially, each language version gets a separate content file with a different Language but the same pid.

• Language is the language of the page. A page without a language header gets assigned the default_language.

• pid identifies the same page (content-wise) across different languages, making it possible to find a different language version of a certain page. Same content, different language -> same pid.

You can organize your content directory with one folder per language, then you can use the language_base_url variable instead of base_url. See Template variables defined for Twig.

Each language folder can contain index.md and 404.md files. These files must have the corresponding Language header and the same pid. All Markdown files can be placed in the folder corresponding to their language.

The structure should be as follows:

content
  └───en
  │   │   index.md
  │   │   404.md
  │   └   ...
  └───fr
      │   index.md
      │   404.md
      └   ...

Sample of content/en/index.md

---
Title: Welcome
Description: Pico is a stupidly simple, blazing fast, flat file CMS.
Language: en
pid: home
---

Sample of content/fr/index.md

---
Title: Bienvenue
Description: Pico est un CMS de fichier à plat stupidement simple et ultra rapide.
Language: fr
pid: home
---

Below we've shown some examples of locations and their corresponding URLs:

URL	Physical Location
/	content/index.md if the file exists or content/[lang]/index.md *
/en	content/en/index.md
/fr	content/fr/index.md
/fr/sub/page	content/fr/sub/page.md
/badurl	content/404.md if the file exists or content/[lang]/404.md *
/en/badurl	content/en/404.md

* To replace [lang], the plugin uses the browser language if it is one of the available languages, otherwise the default_language is used.

Template variables defined for Twig

• {{ languages }}
  array of all available languages.
• {{ page_languages }}
  page data array of all different language versions of the current page, including the current page.
  For example, to access the page in english use {{ page_languages['en'] }}.
• {{ current_language }}
  the language of the current page.
• {{ language_base_url }}
  is equivalent to {{ base_url }}/{{ current_language }} and {{ base_url }}?{{ current_language }}, depending on enabled URL rewriting. See https://picocms.org/docs/#url-rewriting.
  In content files you can use the %language_base_url%.

All this can be used to build a language switcher:

<ul>
 {% for language, display_name in languages %}
      {% if language == current_language %}
          <li>{{ display_name }}</li>
      {% else %}
          {% if page_languages[language] %}
              <li><a href="{{ page_languages[language].url }}">{{ display_name }}</a></li>
          {% else %}
              <li><a href="{{ language|link }}">{{ display_name }}</a></li>
          {% endif %}
      {% endif %}
 {% endfor %}
 </ul>

Here, we use {{ language|link }} because the homepage URL for each language matches the language code (e.g. /en or /fr). See Content translation.

Theme translation

This Twig filter can be used in your theme templates:

• translate - To get a translated and formatted string (e.g. {{ 'my_key'|translate }}).
  See https://php.net/manual/en/function.sprintf.php.

You must add a language directory in your Pico installation, with one file per language. Each file must contain all the keys used by the translate Twig filter in your templates.

The structure should be as follows:

language
  │   en.php
  │   fr.php

Sample of language/en.php

<?php
return array(
    "my_key" => "my translated value",      // {{ 'my_key'|translate }}
    "posted_by" => "Posted by %s on %s",    // {{ 'posted_by'|translate(page.author, page.date_formatted) }}
);

Changing the site title automatically

In addition to the regular site_title defined in config.yml, the MultiLanguage plugin can adjust the {{ site_title }} twig variable according to the language of the given page.

##
# Basic
#
site_title: Pico                    # The title of your website

##
# MultiLanguage support
#
site_titles:                        # The list of translated titles of your website.
    en: Website title               #   English title of your website
    fr: Titre du site web           #   French title of your website

This creates an array called site_titles (as opposed to the default site_title). site_titles uses the same language codes used within individual pages. If there is no entry given for a page's language, it will default to the original site_title variable set.

Changing the page date formatted automatically

In addition to the regular date_format defined in config.yml, the MultiLanguage plugin can adjust the {{ date_formatted }} twig variable according to the language of the given page. You can define a date format and which locale (available on your server) you want to use for each language of the site.

##
# Content
#
date_format: %D %T                  # Pico's default date format;
                                    #     See https://php.net/manual/en/function.strftime.php for more info

##
# MultiLanguage support
#
date_formats:                       # The list of date formats by language.
                                    #     See https://php.net/manual/en/function.strftime.php for more info
    en: %B %d, %Y                   #   e.g. september 23, 2021
    fr: %d %B %Y                    #   e.g. 23 septembre 2021

date_locales:                       # The list of date locales by language.
                                    #     See https://php.net/manual/en/function.setlocale.php for more info
    en: en_US.UTF-8
    fr: fr_FR.UTF-8

This creates an array called date_formats (as opposed to the default date_format). date_formats uses the same language codes used within individual pages. If there is no entry given for a page's language, it will default to the original date_format variable set.

An other array called date_locales is created, which uses the same language codes used within individual pages. If there is no entry given for a page's language, the server locale will be used by default.

Changelog

1.0

• Breaking changes

  • The language management has changed, you must indicate in your config.yml the available languages.
  • Template variables defined for Twig has changed:
    • {{ languages }} returns an array of all available languages defined in config.yml, instead of all strings defined in language headers.
    • {{ page_languages }} still returns the same, but the structure has changed. Now the array returns key => value pairs, where the key is the language of the page.

• New features

  • The concept of language_base_url which allows you to organize your content directory with one folder per language.
  • Theme translation.
  • Changing the page date formatted automatically.

License

http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT