@xkapr - The system I used/documented was devised before Martijn produced the multi-language plugin, and the two approaches are indepdent.

I recommend using the plugin, because it is integral to Wolf and as a "core" plugin, will be maintained and developed.

The system I described (and demo'ed) is there as an alternative, and illustrates a technique that can be used for different "switching" situations. But it does not use the multi-language plugin. You need to follow the instructions in the wiki to get the content to "change".

If I haven't understood your problem, please ask again!

@xkapr - if you set the multiple languages plugin to "translation as page" instead of "translation as tab", you can also translate the page title as long as the slug remains the same.

(the slug needs to remain the same as the original because the system needs to be able to know its the same page as the original)

It's working perfectly. You selected the "URI" option. That means the language to use is embedded in the URL. Also, you've selected "Translations as page copy" which means a page (and its children) should be created for each language you support.

When you write your menu code, you are responsible for skipping the pages intended for translations.

An easy way to do this is by setting (for example) the "nl" page (for dutch) to status "hidden". That will prevent it from showing up in the results of the children() function in normal use.

I think that I have found the cause of this error. If I create a copy of a page and move it using the reorder function in the tree I get this error. However, if i create a fresh page under fr, and paste the content in it, this works fine. perhaps a bug which links it to the slug of the english page and consider a duplicate?
i have another question. how do i create the equivalent home page in french. i think this will have to be done with the top level page "fr" which is hidden for the moment, but haven't yet figured out how so that all the links make reference to the french pages. also, are there any snippets for putting the languages on the home page from which the visitors can choose?
the skeleton of the site is at http://shail.free.fr it doesn't contain anything but some content from a very old site.
thanks in advance for your help.

Hi Martijn,
is there an easy way to have the menu also translated?

My way is (using tabs):
step 1: add to MultiLangController.php file

    public static function translateTitle($page)
    {
        if ($page->hasContent('titles')):
            $titles2 = $page->content('titles');
            $res = preg_match('/'.I18n::getLocale().':\s*(.*)/i', $titles2, $results2);
            if($res == 1):
                $title2 = trim($results2[1]);
            else: 
                $title2 = $page->title();
            endif;
        else:
            $title2 = $page->title();
        endif;
        return $title2;
    }

step 2: add tab titles to pages and complete
en: english tiltle
pl: polski tytuł
de: deutsch titel
...
step 3: in Your theme

<title><?php echo MultiLangController::translateTitle($this); ?></title>

nav

 <li><?php echo $menu->link(MultiLangController::translateTitle($menu), (in_array($menu->slug, explode('/', $this->url)) ? ' class="current"': null)); ?></li>

Hope it help

Last edited by djgprv (2012-05-13 09:50)

@kirk,

If you're using the setup where the language is part of the URI ("uri" option in the plugin) , you can do it in a similar way as the Multiple Languages plugin itself does it. The plugin fist calls replaceUri() and then replaceContentByUri() based on events.

The first function determines what the requested language is based on the keys of the SettingController::$iso_639_1 array. It stores that in a GLOBAL variable called $urilang. That variable is used by the second function to actually replace the content.

You could use a similar tactic and reuse the $urilang variable which I believe should be available already by the time your menu code is executed. Translated page names could be stored in page parts called "fr_title", "nl_title" etc... your code can then replace the title by $urilang.'_title'...

If you, for example, want to use the browser preferences ("header" option in the plugin) to determine the language, you can just call:

        use_helper('I18n');
        $found = false;

        foreach (I18n::getPreferredLanguages() as $lang) {
            if ( Setting::get('language') == $lang) { break; }

            if ( your language specific part exists based on $lang ) {
                // do your thing
                $found = true;
            }

            if ($found) break;
        }

You're welcome. There are probably better ways too.

If you want users to be able to dynamically select their language based on the flag they click for example (which sounds like your plan), then the cookie way is just about the only way.

When no cookie is set, you'll have to either assume the default language of the site or determine the desired language some other way like you said.

Once the user makes a selection (or you did it for them), a cookie should be set that's checked and acted upon every time the user wants to view a page. This last part can be achieves by using the Observer system and watching for the page_found event.

I would probably change config.php to dynamically determine the URL_PUBLIC:

// The full URL of your Wolf CMS install
define('URL_PUBLIC', 'http://'.substr(dirname($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']), 0, strrpos(dirname($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']), '/wolf')).'/');

HOWEVER, its important that only domain names belonging to your site resolve to that site. In this sort of setup Wolf CMS would accept just about any domain name for its site.