NestJS / TypeORM localization

Question

I'm working on an application using NestJS server and TypeORM. I need to localize some fields, and after research, I found this package typeorm-i18n. The documentation says that if you are using NestJS you should use this package: vlzh/nest-typeorm-i18n instead. But there are no examples of how to use it. And I've also looked into the test folder, but with no luck.

Does anyone know how to use this package? Or maybe come up with a better solution?

Answer 1

Looking at the fixtures of typeorm-i18n the solution is based on having a separate column for each translatable field for each supported language. Though this may yield the simplest database schema design, I would only use this if you have very few (1-2) translatable fields, and only a small couple (2-3) languages to support, and don't foresee this to change in the future.

In most other cases I would look into having a true multi-language database schema. There are some nice StackOverflow answers that explain possible solutions, like Schema for a multilanguage database (also look at solution #5 in the second answer). It happens to be that this answer was linked to from the (at time of writing still open) TypeORM github issue I18n messages.

In the issue @michael-bromley suggests a nice TypeORM solution based off of this (be sure to read the follow-up as he is now using a modified version). Solution evolved and implemented in his own open-source e-commerce product Vendure (see translatable Product entity).

At the end of the issue an N-to-M relationship between Language and Product is also proposed.

To me Michael Bromley's approach seems a good one. But you'll probably have to distill the latest version from his Vendure project.