TranslateRoutes

This Rails plugin provides a simple way to translate your URLs to any number of languages, even on a fully working application.

It works fine with all kind of routing definitions, including RESTful and named routes.
Your current code will remain untouched: your current routing code, helpers and links will be translated transparently - even in your tests. (Un)installing it is a very clean and simple process, so why don't you give it a chance? ;)

This version works only with Rails 2.3.x. You can find all available versions in the wiki.

Sample application

There is a sample application which can be very useful to see how to integrate this plugin on your Rails application. The application itself includes all the required steps: 3 lines, an optional filter and a yaml translations file were used.

Quick start

Let's start with a tiny example. Of course you need to define your routes first, e.g:

ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map| 
  map.contact 'contact', :controller => 'contact', :action => 'index'
end

1. Download the plugin to your app's /vendor/plugins directory.

2. Write your translations on a standard YAML file (e.g: i18n-routes.yml), including the locales and it translations pairs:

   es: contact: contacto

3. Append a line to your routes.rb file to activate the translations. If you loaded the translations file with your other I18n translations files, the line will be:

   ActionController::Routing::Translator.i18n('es')

and if you want to keep the file separated (e.g: config/i18n-routes.yml), the line to append is:

ActionController::Routing::Translator.translate_from_file('config','i18n-routes.yml')

You can see it working by executing rake routes on the shell:

contact_es_es_path /es-ES/contacto {:locale=>"es", :controller=>"contact", :action=>"index"}
contact_en_us_path /contact        {:locale=>"'en'", :controller=>"contact", :action=>"index"}

As we can see, a new spanish route has been setted up and a locale parameter has been added to the routes.

4. Include this filter in your ApplicationController:

   before_filter :set_locale_from_url

Now your application recognizes the different routes and sets the I18n.locale value on your controllers, but what about the routes generation? As you can see on the previous rake routes execution, the contact_es_es_path and contact_en_us_path routing helpers have been generated and are available in your controllers and views. Additionally, a contact_path helper has been generated, which generates the routes according to the current request's locale. This way your link

This means that if you use named routes you don't need to modify your application links because the routing helpers are automatically adapted to the current locale.

5. Hey, but what about my tests?

Of course, your functional and integration testing involves some requests. The plugin includes some code to add a default locale parameter so they can remain untouched. Append it to your test_helper and it will be applied.

Documentation

You can find additional information in the translate_routes' wiki.

Questions, suggestions, bug reports...

Feedback, questions and comments will be always welcome at raul@murciano.net

Credits

• Main development:

  • Raul Murciano http://raul.murciano.net - code
  • Domestika INTERNET S.L http://domestika.org - incredible support, really nice people to work with!

• Contributors:

  • Aitor Garay-Romero
  • hoelmer (sorry mate, I can't find your real name)
  • Nico Ritsche

Rails routing resources

• David Black's 'Rails Routing' ebook rocks! - 'Ruby for Rails' too, BTW.
• Obie Fernandez's 'The Rails Way' - the definitive RoR reference, great work Obie!
• As a part of the impressive Rails Guides set there is an awesome document about rails routing by Mike Gunderloy:

License

Copyright (c) 2007 Released under the MIT license (see MIT-LICENSE)  
Raul Murciano <http://raul.murciano.net>  
Domestika INTERNET S.L. <http://domestika.org>