PHP XTemplate Forums

• Localization and var substitution
  by skruger (Posted Fri Oct 10, 2008 4:27 pm)
  Hello,
  
  I've been using XTemplate for quite some time. Among others, I use it for localization of my applications. Particularly for applications that are mainly built up of phrases, XTemplate is a great light-weight tool for localization. Here is an example to show how I use it:
  
  page.php:
  

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  $en-GB = array( 'YES' => 'yes', 'NO' => 'no' );
$fr-FR = array( 'YES' => 'oui', 'NO' => 'non' );
$lang = $en-GB;

$tpl = new XTemplate( 'page.html' );
$tpl->assign( 'LANG', $lang );


  
  
  page.html:
  

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  ....
{LANG.YES}
...


  
  
  You get the picture. Now, I had some trouble with using numbers or other dynamic data in my application. For example, the phrase: 'you have 3 messages'. I had to break up this message in 2 parts:
  page2.php:
  

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  $en-GB = array( 'MESCOUNT1' => 'you have', 'MESCOUNT2' => 'messages' );
$fr-FR = array( 'MESCOUNT1' => 'vous avez', 'MESCOUNT2' => 'messages' );
$lang = $en-GB;

$tpl = new XTemplate( 'page2.html' );
$tpl->assign( 'LANG', $lang );
$tpl->assign( 'NUM', 3 );


  
  
  page2.html:
  

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  ...
  

  {LANG.MESCOUNT1} {NUM} {LANG.MESCOUNT2}

  
  

  
  
  To make life easier, I have modified XTemplate to allow variable substitution in template placeholders. Here's how it works:
  page3.php
  

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  $en-GB = array( 'MESCOUNT' => 'you have {0} messages' );
$fr-FR = array( 'MESCOUNT' => 'vous avez {0} messages' );
$lang = $en-GB;

$tpl = new XTemplate( 'page3.html' );
$tpl->assign( 'LANG', $lang );
$tpl->assign( 'NUM', 3 );


  
  
  page3.html
  

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  ...
  

  {LANG.MESCOUNT,NUM}

  
  

  
  
  A placeholder is now a comma-separated list where the first entry is the main phrase and the following are vars to substitute in the main phrase, much like the format of the printf statement. I decided to keep it simple (and I was inspired my Flex, I must admit, for the {0} syntax). The following is an exerpt of the modified code of parse():
  
  

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  preg_match_all("/\{([A-Za-z0-9\.,_]+?)}/",$this->blocks[$bname],$var_array);