Introduction:

Definition of languageToday I'll show you a way of translating your website very easily, and then have the browser detect user language automatically.

First you need some sort of php template system, I'll show you the one that I've developed, which is not very advanced but works perfectly for small sites.

What it does is in each page there is always a part that repeats. In my main page the repeating part is the header, left sidebars, and footer. And the only thing that changes is the content. What I did is a class called page, and that class generated the code needed for the header, sidebar and footer. The content is included from a folder called "content", which then contains subfolders, each named with the language code, so if the folder contains the spanish translation it would be named "es". (See all language codes)

Another class is "session", it does a check for new users or returning users based on session variables that store their preferred language, it also checks for the URI changer (?lang=...), and if none of that is found, it then checks for the user OS language, then checks if it is available and if it is, it sets it as preferred language of the site, if not, the default language is selected.

Codes for this:

The following codes must go in a folder structure like so "lib/content/". This can be change, but it makes it more easy to understand.

At the bottom of this there is a link to a zip file containing all necessary files to have this work

The filenames I used are: "page.php" for the page object, and "session.php" for the session object.

The page object (simplified):

//This contains the page object - Used to generate the page layout
 
class Page
 
{
 
var $timep = 0;
 
//functions to display a page:
 
function genTop($title,$extraCSS='',$extraScripts='',$extras=''){ //for the top part (doctype...)
 
//setup time counter
 
$this->timep = round(microtime(), 3);
 
//start file inclusion
 
include('lib/content/core/doctype.htm'); //includes opening html tag and head
 
include('lib/content/core/metas.htm'); //includes the meta data (All the same)
$metaLang = $_SESSION['lang'].'-'.strtoupper($_SESSION['lang']);
echo '<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="'.$metaLang.'" />'; //language meta tag
 
if($title !== ''){ $title = $title.' | '; } //add | if necesary
 
echo '<title>'.$title;
 
switch($_SESSION['lang']){
 
case 'es':
 
echo 'Fundacion Urbano Alvarez';
 
break;
 
case 'en':
 
echo 'Urbano Alvarez Foundation';
 
break;
 
}
 
echo '</title>';
 
include('lib/content/core/link-rel.htm'); //includes the linking css
 
if($extraCSS !== ''){
 
//Get an array with all extra style sheets
 
$css = explode(',',$extraCSS);
 
$totalCSS = count($css);
 
//now iterate through all extra css
 
for($i=0; $i<$totalCSS; $i++){
 
echo '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="'.$css[$i].'" media="all" />';
 
}
 
//
 
}
 
include('lib/content/core/scripts.php'); //includes all javascript scripts
 
if($extraScripts !== ''){
 
//get an array with all extra scripts
 
$scripts = explode(',',$extraScripts);
 
$totalScripts = count($scripts);
 
//Now include all extra scripts
 
for($i=0; $i<$totalScripts; $i++){
 
echo '<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="'.$scripts[$i].'"></script>';
 
}
 
//
 
}
 
echo $extras; // Any extra code that may be entered before the head
 
echo '</head>';
 
//
 
echo '<body>';
 
include('lib/content/core/top.php');
 
include('lib/content/core/left.php'); //The left navigation column
 
echo '<div id="content">';
 
}
 
function genContent($pageName=''){
 
global $session;
 
if($pageName == ''){
 
$pageName = $session->url;
 
}
 
include('lib/content/'.$_SESSION['lang'].'/'.$pageName);
 
}
 
function genBottom($extraFooter='',$extraScripts=''){
 
if($_SESSION['lang'] == 'es'){
 
$changeLang = 'Cambiar idioma a: <a href="?lang=en">English</a>';
 
}else{
 
$changeLang = '...'; //Here goes code for extra stuff (I use it for stumbleupon)
 
}
 
echo '<p>'.$changeLang.'</p>';
 
echo '</div><!-- end .content  -->';
 
echo '<div id="footer">';
 
echo '<div id="footerLeft"><img src="img/body/footerLeft.jpg" width="41" height="93" /></div>';
 
echo '<div id="footerText">';
 
$time2 = round(microtime(), 3);
 
$gen = $time2 - $this->timep;
 
if($_SESSION['lang'] == 'es'){
 
echo 'Spanish footer';
 
}else if($_SESSION['lang'] == 'en'){
 
echo 'English footer';
 
}
 
if($extraFooter !== ''){
 
echo $extraFooter;
 
}
 
echo '</p>';
 
if($_SESSION['lang'] == 'es'){
 
echo 'Spanish bottom links';
 
}else if($_SESSION['lang'] == 'en'){
 
echo 'English bottom links';
 
}
 
echo '</div>';
 
echo '</div><!-- end .footer  -->';
 
include('lib/content/core/analytics.htm'); //google analytics code
 
if($extraScripts!==''){
 
echo $extraScripts;
 
}
 
echo '</body></html>';
 
}
 
};
 
?>

So now the session class:

//proc all page display
include('lib/content/lang.php'); //language detector
include('lib/content/page.php');
$page = new Page;
class Session
{
	var $lang;     	   //Username given on sign-up
	var $url;          //The page url current being viewed
    var $referrer;     //Last recorded site page viewed
 
	/* Class constructor */
   function Session(){
      $this->time = time();
      $this->startSession();
   }
 
   function cf($filename){//function to clean a filename string so it is a valid filename
   		$fp = explode('/',$filename);
		$num = count($fp);
		return $fp[$num-1];
	}
 
   /**
    * startSession - Performs all the actions necessary to
    * initialize this session object. Tries to determine if the
    * the user has logged in already, and sets the variables
    * accordingly. Also takes advantage of this page load to
    * update the active visitors tables.
    */
   function startSession(){
   		session_start();   //Tell PHP to start the session
 
		/* Set referrer page */
      if(isset($_SESSION['url'])){
         $this->referrer = $search = $this->cf($_SESSION['url']);
      }else{
         $this->referrer = "/";
      }
 
      /* Set current url */
      $this->url = $_SESSION['url'] = $this->cf($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);
 
	  /* Set user-determined language: */
	  	//set up languages array:
		  $langs = array('en','es');
		//
	  if(isset($_GET['lang'])){
	  	if(in_array($_GET['lang'],$langs)){
			$this->lang =  $_SESSION['lang'] = $_GET['lang'];
		}
	  }
	  if(!isset($_SESSION['lang']) || !in_array($_SESSION['lang'],$langs)){
	  	  $this->lang = $_SESSION['lang'] = language();
	  }
	}
};
/**
 * Initialize session object
 */
$session = new Session;
 
?>

Well so those are the classes used to format page display. I think they are pretty self-explanatory but if you have any doubt about their usage, comment it.

Using it:

So once you have all set up create a new php file in the root "/". I'll name it "test.php". This file is the generator of the test page. What you need now is a folder inside "lib/content/" with the language code of the language used. I have two, one with "es" and another one with "en", for spanish and english respectively.

To change languages, put a link with this: <a href="?lang=((New lang code here))">Change language to...</a>

Now paste the following code in there:

$title['es'] = 'Bienvenido a la pagina de prueba';
$title['en'] = 'Welcome to the test page';
$page-&gt;genTop($title[$_SESSION['lang']]);
$page-&gt;genContent();
$page-&gt;genBottom();
?&gt;

What this does is it first includes the session.php, with the object initializers. Then it creates an array with the different titles, one for each language offered. Then it calls the object "page" to create the page, in three steps. Top, content, and footer.

The content is retrieved from the appropriate folder ("en" for english, "es" for spanish, and so on ...), by including a file called exactly the same as the generator file, so in this case ("test.php"), supposing you are browsing the english version, it will include the file "lib/content/en/test.php" which should contain plain html like the following:

 
<h2>This is a test page</h2>
 
This is some content...

And this is it!

Download example (zip):

Here you can download a zip with all files for example purposes:

Pack with all necessary files (Zip package)

File structure of the zip:

  • lib
    • content
      • page.php
      • session.php
      • lang.php
      • otherLangs.php
      • core
        • doctype.htm
        • metatags.htm
        • Other .htm files needed
      • en
        • test.php
      • es
        • test.php
  • test.php

The otherLangs.php contains an array with all possible language codes, so if you don't know a language code you can check it there.

The lang.php file contains a function used to check the user preferred language, you can probably understand how it works by looking at it.