fText

The fText class is a static class with the sole purpose of creating a hook to allow for writing internationalized application and localizing Flourish. None of the Flourish classes require it be loaded, but if it is, all message/parameter interpolation is passed through this class.

Composing Messages

The fText class includes a key method to help with the i18n of code. The method compose() allows creating a message in multiple pieces that are later interpolated, allowing for efficient translation efforts.

Typically, a call to compose() will look like:

// Example variable values
$message_type      = 'error';
$message_part_name = 'parts';

echo fText::compose(
    'This is an example of displaying an %1$s message containing variable %2$s',
    $message_type,
    $message_part_name
);

which would produce the result:

This is an example of displaying an error message containing variable parts

At its core, compose() is simply a wrapper around sprintf(). However, being a wrapper allows setting up two hooks for translation. The method registerComposeCallback() allows us to intercept any string sent to compose() and modify it. The first parameter, $timing, allow registering the callback 'pre' or 'post' the sprintf() call. The second parameter, $callback, defines which method to pass the string to.

Any callback registered pre will get the un-interpolated string, while any callback registered post will get the interpolated string. Here is an example of translation using compose:

function translate($string)
{
    static $translations = array(
        'This is an example of displaying an %1$s message containing variable %2$s' => 'This is an %1$s message containing %2$s'
    );

    if (isset($translations[$string])) {
        return $translations[$string];
    }
    return $string;
}

fText::registerComposeCallback('pre', 'translate');

$message_type      = 'error';
$message_part_name = 'parts';

echo fText::compose(
    'This is an example of displaying an %1$s message containing variable %2$s',
    $message_type,
    $message_part_name
);

The above PHP would output the following:

This is an error message containing parts

Localization of Flourish

Every exception and error in Flourish will be passed through compose(), thus allowing for localization of the Flourish code base. Please see the MessagesList page for a list of all messages and their location in the source code.