How does gettext handle dynamic content?

Question

In php (or maybe gettext in general), what does gettext do when it sees a variable to dynamic content?

I have 2 cases in mind.

1) Let's say I have <?=$user1?> poked John <?=$user2?>. Maybe in some language the order of the words is different. How does gettext handle that? (no, I'm not building facebook, that was just an example)

2) Let's say I store some categories in a database. They rarely, but they are store in a database. What would happen if I do <?php echo gettext($data['name']); ?> ? I would like the translators to translate those category names too, but does it have to be done in the database itself?

Thanks

Answer 1

Your best option is to use sprintf() function. Then you would use printf notation to handle dynamic content in your strings. Here is a function I found on here a while ago to handle this easily for you:

function translate()
{
    $args = func_get_args();
    $num = func_num_args();
    $args[0] = gettext($args[0]);

    if($num <= 1)
      return $args[0];

    return call_user_func_array('sprintf', $args);

}

Now for example 1, you would want to change the string to:

%s poked %s

Which you would input into the translate() function like this:

<?php echo translate('%s poked %s', $user1, $user2); ?>

You would parse out all translate() functions with poEdit. and then translate the string "%s poked %s" into whatever language you wanted, without modifying the %s string placeholders. Those would get replace upon output by the translate() function with user1 and user2 respectively. You can read more on sprintf() in the PHP Manual for more advanced usages.

For issue #2. You would need to create a static file which poEdit could parse containing the category names. For example misctranslations.php:

<?php

_('Cars');
_('Trains');
_('Airplanes');

Then have poEdit parse misctranslations.php. You would then be able to output the category name translation using <?php echo gettext($data['name']); ?>

Answer 2

If you have somewhere in your code: <?=sprintf(_('%s poked %s'), $user1, $user2)?> and one of your languages needs to swap the arguments it is very simple. Simply translate your code like this: msgid "%s poked %s" msgstr "%2$s translation_of_poked %1$s"