MultiLingual (i18N) Solutions in

ColdBox PlatformOğuz Demirkapı

VP | Workcubeblog.demirkapi.net

Working & living in İstanbul Coding since ‘85, CGI Programming since ’94

(Perl, C/C++) ColdFusion Developer since ’97 Interested in ColdFusion, Flex, AIR, Ruby, Ajax,

Frameworks, i18N, L10N, G11N, Geolocation Created projects in more than 20 languages! Have big interest in Epistemology Personal blog: http://blog.demirkapi.net

About Me

TheoryGetting basics on i18N

Yes!

Do we need multilingualism?

English is just another language. The World Wide Web should be truly world-wide! Internationalization is important to ensure that users worldwide

can equally benefit from Web technology. Wide diversity world-wide:

Scripts (Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Tamil, Katakana,...) Languages (English, German, Turkish, Korean, Japanese,...) Typographic conventions Cultural conventions Political circumstances

Avoid fragmentation of specifications due to localization. Make sure internationalization is done at the right place.

Why i18N (Internationalization)?

What is i18N (Internationalization)? Application functions in at least two locales

What is L10N (Localization)? Process of applying a locale or language "skin"

to an I18N application What is G11N (Globalization)?

i18N & L10N

What is …?

Internationalization & Localization

Globalization

Single character set Single executable Single install Single server serves all

clients in all languages

Localization

Based on globalized software

Adds specific translations and adaptations for particular languages and markets

Globalized software can be localized without any code changes

Character encoding specifies mappings from a character set to the integer numbers that represent the characters on a computer.

EUC-JP (Japanese) EUC-KR (Korean) ISO-8859-1 (Western European and English) SHIFT_JIS (Japanese) UTF-8 (All Languages)

Character encoding

The combination of a language and a country code

en_US: US English (color, $) en_GB: British English (colour, £) de_CH: German in Switzerland tr_TR: Turkish in Turkey

What is Locale?

Manual Default locale can be loaded and other options would

be available by selection via buttons/selects etc. Locale Detection

Parsing ‘Accept-Language’ header on HTTP request Not usable with URLLoader Capabilities.language property in Flash Player and AIR Parsing browser and OS language settings via

JavaScript Location detection depending on IP

Selecting/Detecting Locale

Unicode (unicode.org) is an character set for all the characters and symbols of the world.

Unicode provides a unique number for every character.

Except Klingon!

" ؟ " Wكود يوِن الموحدة الشفرة هي ماUnicode nedir? Τι είναι το UnicodeCos'è Unicode?유니코드에 대해 ?Что такое Unicode?

What is Unicode?

Why do we need to use Unicode? Avoids data corruption Single encoding for text in all languages Makes software globalization possible

Vastly reduces development cost Vastly reduces maintenance, update and support cost

Switching to Unicode has no disadvantages for single language users, to the contrary it usually offers advantages even for single language users. And it offers great advantages for multilingual users.

Encoding: Use Unicode wherever possible for content, databases, etc. Always declare the encoding of content.

Unicode (cont.)

i18N & Webi18N & web technologies

UTF-8 is the recommended encoding for files. Use a Unicode capable editor (IDE)

ColdFusion/Flash Builder Default encoding is UTF-8

Eclipse Default encoding is Cp1252 Change it into UTF-8

Window-> Preferences -> General -> Workspace Text file encoding

No BOM creation OK for current files with BOM

Unicode & Files

Dreamweaver Supports full Unicode when selected Support BOM (Byte Order Mark)

Homesite/CFStudio Never!http://www.adobe.com/go/tn_19059

Notepad The best tool!

Unicode & Files (cont.)

Use a robust database with right settings MS SQL Server MySQL Server PostgreSQL Server Oracle

Beware of Unicode Support MySQL 4.1 and up

default-character-set=utf8character-set-server = utf8collation-server = utf8_general_ci

MS SQL Server SQL Server nvarchar, ntext etc.

Unicode & Database

i18N & CFMLi18N & CFML Platform

Supports Unicode starting from ColdFusion MX

Use ColdFusion MX If possible ColdFusion MX 7.x and up Use Updated JVM Set Required Locale

ColdFusion History

Use DSN Settings MS SQL Server

String Format Enable High ASCII characters and Unicode for

data sources configured for non-Latin characters MySQL

Select MySQL 4/5 driver

ColdFusion & Databases

Use Unicode If possible with BOM support

ColdFusion MX Detects BOM If you have BOM support on your file

ColdFusion understand your locale and there is no need to use extra tags such as cfprocessingdirective

ColdFusion & Files

ColdFusion MX Templates If there is no BOM <cfprocessingdirective pageencoding="utf-8">must be included in every CFM template. Using in Application.cfm or cfc etc. does not

help

ColdFusion & Files

Beware of ColdFusion Functions & Tags CFPROCESSINGDIRECTIVE, CFCONTENT, CFFILE, CFHEADER, CFHTTP,

CFHTTPPARAM, CFMAIL, CFMAILPART tags and the SETENCODING, GETENCODING, TOBASE64, TOSTRING, URLDECODE, and URLENCODEDFORMAT functions etc.

Use encoding in Tags <cfmail to="#user#" from="#me#" subject="Unicode Test" charset="utf-

8"> <cfmailpart charset="utf-8" type="plain“>#mymailasplaintext#

</cfmailpart> <cfmailpart charset="utf-8" type="html“>#mymailashtml#

</cfmailpart> </cfmail>

ColdFusion & Tags & Functions

Multipart POST<form action="#FOO#“ method="post"

enctype="multipart/form-data: charset=utf-8“>

HTML/XHTML<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

Detect Locale cgi.HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE IP & GeoLocator

HTML & i18N

MVC Benefits Java Resource Bundles

JRB General usage with CFCs IBM ICU4J Library GNU GetText ()

Database XML

Code & Language Isolation

Resource Bundle Tools RM Manager (

http://www.icu-project.org/repos/icu/tools/trunk/unicodetools/com/ibm/rbm/docs/index.html)

Attesoro (attesoro.org) Eclipse Plugin (

sourceforge.net/projects/eclipse-rbe/) Web based (www.jmpj.net/rbMan/)

Java Resource Bundles

ColdBox has an i18N plugin based on Java Resource Bundleshttp://wiki.coldbox.org/wiki/I18n.cfm

i18N in ColdBox

ColdBox config changes:

//i18n & Localizationi18n = {

defaultResourceBundle = "includes/i18N/main",defaultLocale = "en_US", localeStorage = "session", // default session, cookie,

client, session, request

unknownTranslation = "**NOT FOUND**"};

Activating i18N Support

Base i18N PlugingetPlugin("i18n")

Resource Bundle PlugingetPlugin("resourceBundle")

Loading Plugins

Get user’s current localegetfwLocale()Get the current user's locale from the locale storage

Set a specific localesetFWLocale( valid_locale )Set the current user's locale, internally it uses the locale storage assigned

getResource(resource, [default], [locale], [values]) Get a language resource from the default user's locale or a specific locale and even do array/struct/string replacements via positional or named {} patterns: {1}, {2}, {username}, {lastName}

Base i18N Methods

Prc scope usagefunction onRequestStart(event,rc,prc) {

prc.i18n = getPlugin("i18n"); }

A common practice for localized applications is to store a reference to the i18n plugin object in the prc scope for easy access throughout your application so you are not constantly calling getPlugin("i18n") all over the place if you need to rely heavily on i18n methods. This is a performance optimization best practice.

Prc Scope Usage

// function change a user's locale function changeLocale(event,rc,prc) {

setFwlocale(rc.locale); setNextEvent('home‘);

}

<cffunction name="doChangeLocale" access="public" returntype="void" output="false">

<cfargument name="event" type="any"> <--- Change Locale ---> <cfset getPlugin("i18n").setfwLocale(event.getValue("locale"))> <cfset event.setNextEvent('main.home')>

</cffunction>

Changing Locale

getLocales(), isValidLocale() getISOlanguages(), showLanguage() getISOcountries(), showCountry(), showISOCounty() getAvailableTZ(), getServerTZ(), i18nDateTimeFormat(),

i18nDateFormat(), i18nTimeFormat(), getLocaleQuery(), getTZQuery(), getTZDisplayName() , usesDST(), getDST(), inDST()

i18nDateAdd(), i18nDateDiff() isBidi() getCurrencySymbol(), getDecimalSymbols()

i18N Methods

rc.now = getPlugin("i18n").toEpoch(now());rc.locales = getPlugin("i18n").getLocales();rc.lang = getPlugin("i18n").showLanguage();rc.country = getPlugin("i18n").showCountry();rc.timeZones = getPlugin("i18n").getAvailableTZ();rc.serverTZ = getPlugin("i18n").getServerTZ();rc.laterOn = getPlugin("i18n").i18nDateAdd(rc.now,"hour",hours,rc.thisTZ);rc.usesDST = getPlugin("i18n").usesDST(rc.thisTZ);if (rc.usesDST) rc.inDST=getPlugin("i18n").inDST(rc.now,rc.thisTZ);rc.tDate=getPlugin("i18n").i18nDateFormat(rc.now,rc.dateF,rc.thisTZ);rc.tDateTime=getPlugin("i18n").i18nDateTimeFormat(rc.now,rc.dateF,rc.timeF,rc.thisTZ);rc.tzOffset=getPlugin("i18n").getTZOffset(rc.now,rc.thisTZ);

Sample Method Usage

Get basic resource based on default or a specific localegetResource(resource,[default],[locale]) #getresource("login")# // gets the login content for active locale

Get complex resource<cfscript>

oRB = getPlugin("resourceBundle");footerParams = ["Oğuz Demirkapı",

"http://blog.demirkapi.net"];</cfscript>#oRB.formatRBString(getResource('footerNote'),footerParams)#

Using Resource Bundle

<cfset oRB = getPlugin("resourceBundle")> <cfset orderDetails = ArrayNew(1)> <cfset orderDetails[1] = "Luis Majano"> <cfset orderDetails[2] = "1-800-CallOrtus">

<cfoutput>#oRB.formatRBString(getResource('confirmMessage'),orderDetails)#</cfoutput>

Parameters in Resource

DEMO

i18N Application DesignDesigning i18N Application

Same content in every locale Mirroring sites Isolated templates and contents

Different content tree in different locales Roots for trees Complex tree referencing

Content Structure

Designing Database Locale definitions

Content related pages have a flag field as locale. Lookup tables have i18N key in table and gets the content

from RB tools Tables vs. Fields

Creating flags for any locale based content would be best practice instead of creating different tables.

Content Types Isolating localized content

All content should be isolated in specific locales Saving localized content

A localization manager would be a proper tool

Database Modeling

ContentBox (http://gocontentbox.org) MuraCMS (http://getmura.com) FarCry Core (http://farcrycore.org)

ColdBox (http://coldbox.org) CFWheels (http://cfwheels.org)

Sample i18N Applications

Unicode http://unicode.org

Adobe Developer Center http://www.adobe.com/devnet/coldfusion/localization_globalizatio

n.html

Globalizing ColdFusionMX (Paul Hastings) http://www.sustainablegis.com/blog/cfg11n/

RBMan http://rbman.riaforge.org

ColdBox Wiki http://wiki.coldbox.org/wiki/I18n.cfm

My blog http://blog.demirkapi.net

Resources

?Oğuz Demirkapı

http://blog.demirkapi.netdemirkapi+ColdBox@gmail.com

Questions & Answers