Plugin: Custom Text (text string variable loader)

Wiki’d.

I updated the package, and included an example “lang.my_custom_text.php” file. See original post for details.

One more note: Language file keys can contain spaces, however they must be entirely lowercase.

e.g. will work: “custom_text” => “Custom Text” will work: “custom text” => “Custom Text” will not work: “Custom_Text” => “Custom Text” will not work: “Custom Text” => “Custom Text”

UPDATE: While language file keys can contain spaces, if you use the Translation Utility to translate strings with spaces in their keys in them, they will not be saved properly.

Here’s an example of how I use this plugin:

I’m creating a multilingual website, and I’ve used a method similar to one described on these forums and in the wiki (multiple custom fields for each language).

However, categories are very difficult to use with this method because you can’t have more than one name for a category. (There are some workarounds posted here, namely using the category description field to hold the category name in the other language, but I wanted to actually use the category description field, and this fails if you have more than two languages.)

So all I have to do is create the categories in EE with their English name (or any name that correlates to the string’s key in my custom language files), and use this plugin within my templates to translate the category name like so:

{categories}
{exp:custom_text string="waz_{category_name}"}
{/categories}

(“waz_” is my custom prefix I’m using so as to not clash with other language variables. Also, this will pull the string from the default “lang.my_custom_text.php” file as described in the posts above. In my “lang.my_custom_text.php” file I have the following (which is translated within the “lang.my_custom_text.php” files for each language:

"waz_blogging" =>
"Blogging Category Name",

update: i figured it out! cool!

what i did: i used a combination of your plugin with the translation idea: http://www.eewiki.com/wiki/Multi_language_site

so instead of using a fixed prefix, i used:

<?php echo $lang ?>_{category}

in lang.my_custom_text.php I defined my different categories: “nl_about” => “wij zijn”,

“nl_contact” => “contacteer ons”,

“fr_about” => “nous sommes”,

“fr_contact” => “contactez nous”,

it works perfect

the only pity is that i have to adapt the file manually each time a category is added…

If the string cannot be located, the string itself will be displayed.

GREAT plugin. Just what I need. Though, I do have a problem. When the string can’t be located in the language file, the string itself ideed is displayed, but in lowercase.

For example:

{exp:custom_text string="Articles"}

..will return “articles” instead of “Articles” when not found in the language file.

Am I doing anything wrong? If not, is there some way to modify the plugin so that the actual original string is returned?

Hi, is this plugin being maintained anywhere? And does it take into consideration the $language variable if there are multiple language folders? (i.e., is the plugin smart enough to parse language/french/lang.my_file.php instead of language/english/lang.my_file.php when the $language global variable is “french” ?)

cheers

aha, I just found the localize_text plugin.

Wiki’d.

The URL is broken.

This plugin can be used to produce user-friendly localized dates.

Examlpe

Default date:

{date format="%d %n %Y"}

To translate “december” to say “декабря”, you need to:

1. Add translations to language file:

"month1" =>
"января",

"month2" =>
"февраля",

2. Reformat date output to something like this

{date format="%d"} {exp:custom_text string="month{date format="%n"}"} {date format="%Y"}

Yes, this requires a bit more processing, but till now I haven’t found any simpler way to do it. Btw, putting instructions for date localization to wiki would save some time for foreign EE newcomers 😉