See rates for the top Laravel developers in Latin America

Building a Laravel Translation Package – Introduction

Published on by

Building a Laravel Translation Package – Introduction image

Introduction

In this multi-part series, we’ll be documenting the process of building and maintaining an open-source package for Laravel. We will cover everything from bootstrapping the package to dealing with your first issues and pull requests and as much as we possibly can in between.

What Will We Build

During this series, we will build a translation package to complement Laravel’s native localization features.

Laravel’s baked-in localization allows your app to handle multiple locales and serve translated content accordingly. Handling various locales is a three-step process:

  1. Taking content out of your templates and moving into language files stored in either JSON or PHP array-style syntax.
  2. Tagging up the content in your templates using one of Laravel’s translation retrieval methods.
  3. Setting the current locale for the app in the app.php

Imagine you want to serve content in both English and Spanish, and you want to use JSON language files. Create one file called en.json and another called es.json in the resources/lang directory.

In each file, create an object and add a key.

// en.json
{
“hello”: “hello”
}
// es.json
{
“hello”: “hola”
}

To render this in a template, you can use the following helper:

// some_file.blade.php
{{ __('hello') }}

Now if your app.locale is set to en, ‘hello’ will be rendered and if set to es, you guessed it, the view renders ‘hola’.

As your project grows, managing these files can be challenging, and our package can help with this challenge. We’ll build the ability to scan your project for missing translation keys and adding those missing translations to your language files. We’ll handle syncing language between multiple locales as well as adding a database driver to help in multi-server environments.

We will use a combination of Tailwind CSS and Vue.js to build out a user-interface for translation management which will ship with the package.

The UI will allow you to add new, update existing and delete existing translations as well as add new locales.

Why Are We Building It?

I am doing this for two reasons. First, language management is something I need in lots of my projects. Though there are good packages out there, none entirely suit my unique requirements.

Second, I don’t currently maintain any open-source projects, and it is something I have always wanted to do. This series will be a learning experience for me, and I feel documenting this process will hopefully be beneficial to others looking to embark on the same challenge.

I’m excited to start this journey and look forward to sharing my experiences with you. If you have any questions or feedback along the way, feel free to reach out on Twitter.

Next up, we are ready to start scaffolding the project in Part 2!

Joe Dixon photo

Founder and CTO of ubisend. Proud Father to two tiny heroes, Husband, developer, occasional globetrotter.

Cube

Laravel Newsletter

Join 40k+ other developers and never miss out on new tips, tutorials, and more.

image
Tinkerwell

Enjoy coding and debugging in an editor designed for fast feedback and quick iterations. It's like a shell for your application – but with multi-line editing, code completion, and more.

Visit Tinkerwell
Curotec logo

Curotec

World class Laravel experts with GenAI dev skills. LATAM-based, embedded engineers that ship fast, communicate clearly, and elevate your product. No bloat, no BS.

Curotec
Bacancy logo

Bacancy

Supercharge your project with a seasoned Laravel developer with 4-6 years of experience for just $2500/month. Get 160 hours of dedicated expertise & a risk-free 15-day trial. Schedule a call now!

Bacancy
Laravel Forge logo

Laravel Forge

Easily create and manage your servers and deploy your Laravel applications in seconds.

Laravel Forge
Tinkerwell logo

Tinkerwell

The must-have code runner for Laravel developers. Tinker with AI, autocompletion and instant feedback on local and production environments.

Tinkerwell
Cut PHP Code Review Time & Bugs into Half with CodeRabbit logo

Cut PHP Code Review Time & Bugs into Half with CodeRabbit

CodeRabbit is an AI-powered code review tool that specializes in PHP and Laravel, running PHPStan and offering automated PR analysis, security checks, and custom review features while remaining free for open-source projects.

Cut PHP Code Review Time & Bugs into Half with CodeRabbit
Join the Mastering Laravel community logo

Join the Mastering Laravel community

Connect with experienced developers in a friendly, noise-free environment. Get insights, share ideas, and find support for your coding challenges. Join us today and elevate your Laravel skills!

Join the Mastering Laravel community
Kirschbaum logo

Kirschbaum

Providing innovation and stability to ensure your web application succeeds.

Kirschbaum
Shift logo

Shift

Running an old Laravel version? Instant, automated Laravel upgrades and code modernization to keep your applications fresh.

Shift
Lucky Media logo

Lucky Media

Get Lucky Now - the ideal choice for Laravel Development, with over a decade of experience!

Lucky Media
Lunar: Laravel E-Commerce logo

Lunar: Laravel E-Commerce

E-Commerce for Laravel. An open-source package that brings the power of modern headless e-commerce functionality to Laravel.

Lunar: Laravel E-Commerce
LaraJobs logo

LaraJobs

The official Laravel job board

LaraJobs
SaaSykit: Laravel SaaS Starter Kit logo

SaaSykit: Laravel SaaS Starter Kit

SaaSykit is a Multi-tenant Laravel SaaS Starter Kit that comes with all features required to run a modern SaaS. Payments, Beautiful Checkout, Admin Panel, User dashboard, Auth, Ready Components, Stats, Blog, Docs and more.

SaaSykit: Laravel SaaS Starter Kit

The latest

View all →
Auto-translate Application Strings with Laratext image

Auto-translate Application Strings with Laratext

Read article
Simplify Factory Associations with Laravel's UseFactory Attribute image

Simplify Factory Associations with Laravel's UseFactory Attribute

Read article
Improved Installation and Frontend Hooks in Laravel Echo 2.1 image

Improved Installation and Frontend Hooks in Laravel Echo 2.1

Read article
Filter Model Attributes with Laravel's New except() Method image

Filter Model Attributes with Laravel's New except() Method

Read article
Arr::from() Method in Laravel 12.14 image

Arr::from() Method in Laravel 12.14

Read article
Streamline API Resources with Laravel's Fluent Methods image

Streamline API Resources with Laravel's Fluent Methods

Read article