Multilingual Web application - how to?
| From: | Denis Gerasimov | Date: | Fri, 08 Apr 2005 06:48:31 +0000 |
| Subject: | Multilingual Web application - how to? | ||
| Groups: | php.general php.i18n | ||
| Request: | Send a blank email to php-general+get-212623@lists.php.net to get a copy of this message | ||
Hello list,
I need to develop a multilingual web site and I am looking for the best way
of handling this task. There are three main issues I know:
1. Storing multilingual data in a database. Possible solutions I know:
a. many tables, one per each supported language, e.g. news_en, news_de.
b. one table having many columns with translations, e.g. (id, date, text_en,
text_de)
We use MySQL 4.1 as a back-end.
2. Multilingual HTML templates, possible solutions:
a. one generic template for everything, one per each language, like
contents_en.tpl.html, contents_de.tpl.html
b. many localized templates for each page, e.g news_en.tpl.html,
news_de.tpl.html
Template engine is Smarty.
3. Storing current language variable, possible solutions:
a. inside the URL like /en/news/
b. using cookies
c. using sessions
Web server is Apache2+mod_rewrite with PHP5
What are pros and cons for each solution? What are other possible solutions
for the above issues?
Best regards, Denis Gerasimov
Outsourcing Services Manager,
VEKOS, Ltd.
www.vekos.ru