Q: How can I use something like ‘echo’ in PHP to output string to response instead of ‘<%=…%>’?

A: Use concat. <% concat “foo” %> will do the same as <%=”foo”%>

from http://almosteffortless.com/2008/07/21/simple-localization-in-rails-22/

I’ve been staying on the sidelines when it comes to localization in Rails for a while now, but I couldn’t help getting excited about the upcoming native support in Rails 2.2. So, with someguidance from the Rails i18n team, I decided to give things a try.

I’ve been extremely pleased with the results so far, but I’m all ears if anyone would like to offer suggestions on how to better achieve basic localization for a Rails app. Here’s where I’m at so far in a kind of how-to format. This is all plugin-free, using only what’s available in core. I expect that plugins will be coming out to add features and functionality, but you can accomplish quite a bit without any extras.

You can try to follow along, or just get the gist be reading through the steps. As noted in the comments, this is just a proof of concept, is not secure, and shouldn’t be used in production as-is.

1. Make a new Rails app and freeze edge:

 
~ $ rails i18n
~ $ cd i18n
~ $ rake rails:freeze:edge

2. Make a couple of translation stores (files) in lib/locale directory:

 
# lib/locale/en-US.rb
{ 'en-US' => {
  :hello_world => "Hello World",
  :hello_flash => "Hello Flash"
}}

# lib/locale/pirate.rb
{ 'pirate' => {
  :hello_world => "Ahoy World",
  :hello_flash => "Ahoy Flash"
}}

3. Set I18n.locale with a before_filter:

 
# app/controllers/application.rb
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

  before_filter :set_locale

  def set_locale
    locale = params[:locale] || 'en-US'
    I18n.locale = locale
    I18n.load_path += Dir[ File.join(RAILS_ROOT, 'lib', 'locale', '*.{rb,yml}') ]
  end

end

4. Make a controller and route to test things out, using symbols from your translation for user messages:

 
# config/routes.rb
ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map|
  map.root :controller => 'home', :action => 'index'
end

# app/controllers/home_controller.rb
class HomeController < ApplicationController
  def index
    flash[:notice] = :hello_flash
  end
end

5. Create a view using symbols for user messages and use the “t” helper to translate:

 
# app/views/home/index.html.erb
<h1><%=t :hello_world %></h1>

<%=t flash[:notice] %>

<%= link_to 'en-US', root_path(:locale => 'en-US') %> or
<%= link_to 'pirate', root_path(:locale => 'pirate') %>

6. Fire up the old script/server and check it out:

 
~ $ script/server

I think that about covers it. Of course, this is a very simple example, but it should cover the basics well enough to get started. Please let me know if you have any ideas about how to simplify/improve this, and thanks again to the Rails i18n team for all of their work - everything looks great so far!

Update: You can use YAML to store translations now. Also, the I18n.populate and I18n.store_translations are no longer necessary (or available).

 
# lib/locale/pirate.yml
pirate:
  hello_world: Ahoy World
  hello_flash: Ahoy Flash

# app/controllers/application.rb
I18n.load_path += Dir[ File.join(RAILS_ROOT, 'lib', 'locale', '*.{rb,yml}') ]

Update: Rails 2.2 comes with simple i18n support fully baked in. This is great news because it makes adding internationalization support even easier. Check out the announcement on the Rails site for details, but the short version is that YAML files put into config/locales can be loaded up with a simple call to their file name. Here’s an example:

 
# config/locales/en.yml
en:
  hello_world: Hello World

# config/environment.rb
config.i18n.default_locale = :en

# app/views/home/index.html.erb
<h1><%=t :hello_world %></h1>

from http://blogs.sun.com/divas/entry/no_such_file_to_load

Rails never fails me. As soon as I publish a series of tutorials for a NetBeans release, a new Rails release comes out which breaks my tutorials (and, apparently, most everyone else’s). Gratefully, some customers took the time to click the Feedback button at the end of our tutorials to let us know the tutorials were no longer working. One customer wrote:

“When trying to create the database following the steps indicated, I got an error indicating the mysql gem had been removed from Rails 2.2.2 and that I should install the mysql gem. (Note from me: the actual error message is “The bundled mysql.rb driver has been removed from Rails 2.2. Please install the mysql gem and try again: gem install mysql.”) However, that gem is also native and can’t be installed with JRuby (the misleading directive to do so from NetBeans was really annoying).”

I have to agree that this is indeed REALLY annoying. However, the “misleading directive” comes from Rails, and not from NetBeans. And, since Rails 2.2 came out after NetBeans 6.5, this was an unexpected message.

While the directive may be true for Ruby, it is not true for JRuby, because the the MySQL adapter is included with JRuby. In addition, as the user pointed out, you can’t install the mysql gem with JRuby because you cannot use any gems that build native C libraries during the install process, and that includes the mysql gem.

I did some googling and found two solutions:

• Use the activerecord-jdbcmysql-adapter. You can find the instructions on how to do that here.
• Copy the MySQL driver to your project’s lib folder. If you have an older Rails version, you can copy the Ruby MySQL driver (mysql.rb) from rails-install-dir/gems/activerecord-version/lib/active_record/vendor/mysql.rb to the project’s lib directory. Unfortunately, you have to do this for every JRuby project.

If anyone else has any other solutions, please post a comment.

P.S. For all you Ruby programmers, when you try out a tutorial, you really should pay attention to what gem versions the tutorial was written for. Gem releases such as Rails and RSpec are not always backwards compatible, so there is a chance that the tutorial will not work with releases that came out after the tutorial was written.