PHP Gettext - No translation

Question

I am trying to use the PHP gettext extension in order to translate some strings. All functions appear to return the correct values but calling gettext()/_() returns the original string only. The PO/MO files seem correct and I believe I have set the directories up correctly. I am running WAMP Server with PHP 5.3.10 on Windows (also tried running 5.3.4 and 5.3.8 because I have the installations).

Firstly, see /new2/www/index.php:

$locale = 'esn'; # returns Spanish_Spain.1252 in var dump

putenv("LC_ALL={$locale}"); // Returns TRUE
setlocale(LC_ALL, $locale); // Returns 'Spanish_Spain.1252'

$domain = 'messages';
bindtextdomain($domain, './locale'); // Returns C:\wamp\www\new2\www\locale
bind_textdomain_codeset($domain, 'UTF-8'); // Returns UTF-8
textdomain($domain); // Returns'messages'

print gettext("In the dashboard"); // Prints the original text, not the translation.
exit;

I have created the following file structure:

www/new2/www/locale/Spanish_Spain.1252/LC_MESSAGES/messages.mo

I have also tried replacing Spanish_Spain.1252 with: es_ES, esn, esp, Spanish, and Spanish_Spain.

The PO file used to generate the MO is like so (only the relevant entry given):

#: C:\wamp\www\new2/www/index.php:76
msgid "In the dashboard"
msgstr "TRANSLATED es_ES DASHBOARD"

This was generated using PoEdit. I have restarted Apache after adding any new .MO file. Also note that I was previously using Zend_Translate with Gettext and it was translating correctly. I wish to rely on the native gettext extension, though, in part because I am attempting to create a lightweight framework of my own.

Any help would be appreciated.

Edit: Amended directory structure. Note - will be able to try recent answers within 24hrs.

Answer 1

I set this up on my XAMPP instance and figure it out.

• Flat out setlocale does not work on Windows, so what it returns is irrelevant.
• For Windows you set the locale using the standard language/country codes (in this case es_ES is Spanish as spoken in Spain)

• Under your locale directory create es_ES/LC_MESSAGES/. This where your messages.mo file lives.

  $locale = 'es_ES'; 
  
  putenv("LC_ALL={$locale}"); // Returns TRUE
  
  $domain = 'messages';
  bindtextdomain($domain, './locale'); 
  bind_textdomain_codeset($domain, 'UTF-8'); 
  textdomain($domain); // Returns'messages'
  
  print gettext("In the dashboard"); 
  exit;
  

I am not sure if this made a different, but I did two things when creating the po file. In poEdit under File -> Preferences I changed the Line ending format to Windows. And after I created the initial po with poEdit I opened the file in Notepad++ and switched the encoding type to UTF-8 as poEdit did not do this.

I hope this at least points you in the right direction.

References

PHP Localization Tutorial on Windows

Country Codes

Language Codes

Answer 2

Your code mentions this as the return value from bindtextdomain:

C:\wamp\www\new2\www\locale

With the setlocale of Spanish_Spain.1252 and textdomain of messages, calls to gettext will look in this path:

C:\wamp\www\new2\www\locale\Spanish_Spain.1252\LC_MESSAGES\messages.mo

But you created the file structure of:

www/new2/locale/Spanish_Spain.1252/LC_MESSAGES/messages.mo
         ^^
         www/ missing here

Edit

Okay, so that didn't help. I've created a test script on Windows and using POEdit like you:

$locale = "Dutch_Netherlands.1252";
putenv("LC_ALL=$locale"); // 'true'
setlocale(LC_ALL, $locale); // 'Dutch_Netherlands.1252'
bindtextdomain("messages", "./locale"); // 'D:\work\so\l10n\locale'
textdomain("messages"); // 'messages'

echo _("Hello world"); // 'Hallo wereld'

My folder structure is like this:

D:\work\so\l10n\
    \locale\Dutch_Netherlands.1252\LC_MESSAGES\messages.mo
    \locale\Dutch_Netherlands.1252\LC_MESSAGES\messages.po
    \test.php

Hope it helps, although it looks almost identical to yours. A few things I found online:

• It's important to set the character set in .po file
• Spaces inside the localization file might have a UTF8 alternative, so be wary of key lookups failing. Probably the best thing to test first is keys without spaces at all.