Traco

Translatable columns for Rails 3, stored in the model table itself.

Inspired by Iain Hecker's translatable_columns.

To store translations outside the model, see Sven Fuchs' globalize3.

Usage

Say you want Post#title and Post#body to support both English and Swedish values.

Name those database columns with locale suffixes, e.g. title_sv and title_en. No title column.

Declare these columns in the model:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  translates :title, :body
end

Now, you can still use the title_sv accessors in forms, validations and other code, but you also get:

#title: Shows the title in the current locale. If blank, falls back to default locale, then to any locale.

#title=: Assigns the title to the column for the current locale, if present. Raises if the column doesn't exist.

.human_attribute_name(:title_sv): Extends this standard method to return "Title (Swedish)" if you have a translation key i18n.languages.sv = "Swedish" and "Title (SV)" otherwise. Rails uses this method to build validation error messages and form labels.

.translatable_columns: Returns an array like [:title, :body].

.locales_for_column(:title): Returns an array like [:sv, :en] sorted with default locale first and then alphabetically. Suitable for looping in forms:

<% locales_for_column(:title) do |locale| %>
  <p>
    <%= form.label "title_#{locale}" %>
    <%= form.text_field "title_#{locale}" %>
  </p>
<% end %>

And the equivalent methods for body, of course.

Installation

Add this to your Gemfile if you use Bundler 1.1+:

gem 'traco', github: 'barsoom/traco'

Or with an earlier version of Bundler:

gem 'traco', git: 'git://github.com/barsoom/traco.git'

Then run

bundle

to install it.

Running the tests

bundle
rake # or guard

Credits and license

By Barsoom under the MIT license:

Copyright (c) 2012 Barsoom AB

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.