CakePHP i18n __ function returns array

Question

I'm running into a problem with the __ function, and I'm not sure whether it's a bug in Cake (3.2.8), Aura\Intl, or my code. I've tried the same thing in Cake 1.3, and it works as I expect it to, but it's possible that my expectations are simply that way because that's how it worked in 1.3. :-)

When I am building my menus, I use things like __('Teams'), but I also have pages that use things like __n('Team', 'Teams', count($player->teams)). The i18n shell extracts these into the default.pot separately, so when I translate it to French, it's like this:

msgid "Teams"
msgstr "Équipe"

msgid "Team"
msgid_plural "Teams"
msgstr[0] "Équipe"
msgstr[1] "Équipes"

If I call __('Team'), I correctly get 'Équipe' returned, and if I call __n('Team', 'Teams', $x), I correctly get 'Équipe' or 'Équipes' returned, depending on the value of $x. But if I call __('Teams') I get back

Array
(
    [0] => Équipe
    [1] => Équipes
)

This is the case even if I eliminate the msgid "Teams" section, leaving only the plural definition.

In Cake 1.3, __('Teams') would simply return 'Équipes'. (Don't know what it might do in 2.x, as I skipped over that entirely.) So, whose bug is this?

Answer 1

You have two Teams message IDs. The problem is that the CakePHP message file parser stores the messages in a key => value fashion, where the message ID is used as the key, resulting in the Teams messages for msgid_plural to override the Teams message from the preceding msgid.

https://github.com/cakephp/cakephp/blob/3.2.8/src/I18n/Parser/PoFileParser.php#L149 https://github.com/cakephp/cakephp/blob/3.2.8/src/I18n/Parser/PoFileParser.php#L172

https://github.com/cakephp/cakephp/blob/3.2.8/src/I18n/Parser/MoFileParser.php#L137-L140

Since gettext seems to be able to handle this, I'd say that it's at least a missing feature (which might be intentional), however it might even be a bug, I can't tell for sure (but I'd tend towards bug). For clarification, open an issue over at GitHub.

To (temporarily) workaround this issue you could use contexts.