salgua / codeigniter-mlcontent

Codeigniter extension to build multilingual webapp

codeigniter-mlcontent

Codeigniter extension to build multilingual webapp

What is it?

mlcontent is an extension for CodeIgniter that allows you to easily build web application with multilingual content

Installation

the extension consists of only 3 files:

/application/config/mlcontent.php
/application/core/MY_Controller.php
/application/helper/mlcontent_helper.php

just copy them in your application folder

Usage

###prerequisites: You need to autoload the session library

###save data:

mlcontent works using JSON in multilingual fields, instead of plain text. You can start by following these steps:

1. edit /application/config/mlcontent.php and define the default language (default is "en") and the multilingual form fields prefix (default is "ml-")

2. extend your controller using ML_Controller (i.e. class Products extends ML_Controller)

3. in the view forms, to insert or update records, remember to use the "ml-" prefix for fields that are multilingual. Multilingual fields must be like these:

   <input name="ml-name['en']" value="car" />

   <input name="ml-name['it']" value="auto" />

4. your controller will automatically put all POST data in $this->inputdata, transforming multilingual fields into JSON strings. Sending the previous form the content of $this->inputdata will be

   [ml-name] => {"_mlc":{"en":"car","it":"auto"}}

5. in your model you can save ml-fields in tables as usual. If possible, for simplicity, use the same name used in the form fields for your table fields, but it's not mandatory.

display data:

in your view you must use the mlang() helper function to parse ml-fields. The default language is 'en', but you can pass the language as second attribute. Alternatively you can use the session variable 'mlang' to use a different language. An example, assuming that the field 'ml-name' is in the '$product' hash:

<?php echo mlang($product['ml-name']); 
      //it will produce "car"
      echo mlang($product['ml-name'], 'it');
      //it will produce "auto"
      $this->session->set_userdata('mlang', 'it');
      echo mlang($product['ml-name']);
      //it will produce "auto" taking default language from session
?>