Using the PHP HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE server variable

Question

I created a PHP script that checks the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE and loads the website using the appropriate language from the 1st two characters:

          $http_lang = substr($_SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE"],0,2);       switch ($http_lang) {         case 'en':           $SESSION->conf['language'] = 'english';           break;         case 'es':           $SESSION->conf['language'] = 'spanish';           break;         default:           $SESSION->conf['language'] = $PREFS->conf['languages'][$SESSION->conf['language_id']];       } 

If I change the language to Spanish in Firefox the website loads in Spanish fine. However I have had several reports that people in Colombia see the website in english.

Details: "es-co" LCID = 9226 Spanish(Colombia)

Anyone have any ideas as to why this is happening? I thought this was the best way to check what language users support.

Answer 1

A more contemporary method would be to use http_negotiate_language():

 $map = array("en" => "english", "es" => "spanish");  $conf_language= $map[ http_negotiate_language(array_keys($map)) ]; 

If you don't have the http extension installed (and not the intl one as well), there is yet another workaround in the comments (user-note #86787 (Nov 2008; by Anonymous)):

<?php  /*    determine which language out of an available set the user prefers most     $available_languages        array with language-tag-strings (must be lowercase) that are available    $http_accept_language    a HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE string (read from $_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'] if left out)  */  function prefered_language ($available_languages,$http_accept_language="auto") {      // if $http_accept_language was left out, read it from the HTTP-Header      if ($http_accept_language == "auto") $http_accept_language = isset($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE']) ? $_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'] : '';       // standard  for HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE is defined under      // http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.4      // pattern to find is therefore something like this:      //    1#( language-range [ ";" "q" "=" qvalue ] )      // where:      //    language-range  = ( ( 1*8ALPHA *( "-" 1*8ALPHA ) ) | "*" )      //    qvalue         = ( "0" [ "." 0*3DIGIT ] )      //            | ( "1" [ "." 0*3("0") ] )      preg_match_all("/([[:alpha:]]{1,8})(-([[:alpha:]|-]{1,8}))?" .                     "(\s*;\s*q\s*=\s*(1\.0{0,3}|0\.\d{0,3}))?\s*(,|$)/i",                     $http_accept_language, $hits, PREG_SET_ORDER);       // default language (in case of no hits) is the first in the array      $bestlang = $available_languages[0];      $bestqval = 0;       foreach ($hits as $arr) {          // read data from the array of this hit          $langprefix = strtolower ($arr[1]);          if (!empty($arr[3])) {              $langrange = strtolower ($arr[3]);              $language = $langprefix . "-" . $langrange;          }          else $language = $langprefix;          $qvalue = 1.0;          if (!empty($arr[5])) $qvalue = floatval($arr[5]);           // find q-maximal language           if (in_array($language,$available_languages) && ($qvalue > $bestqval)) {              $bestlang = $language;              $bestqval = $qvalue;          }          // if no direct hit, try the prefix only but decrease q-value by 10% (as http_negotiate_language does)          else if (in_array($langprefix,$available_languages) && (($qvalue*0.9) > $bestqval)) {              $bestlang = $langprefix;              $bestqval = $qvalue*0.9;          }      }      return $bestlang;  }  ?>