blob: eb4835a1d53b85c6c443177a34bcac4885db4f3a [file] [log] [blame]
Derek Allard2067d1a2008-11-13 22:59:24 +00001<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
2<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
3<head>
4
5<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
6<title>Language Class : CodeIgniter User Guide</title>
7
8<style type='text/css' media='all'>@import url('../userguide.css');</style>
9<link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' media='all' href='../userguide.css' />
10
11<script type="text/javascript" src="../nav/nav.js"></script>
12<script type="text/javascript" src="../nav/prototype.lite.js"></script>
13<script type="text/javascript" src="../nav/moo.fx.js"></script>
14<script type="text/javascript" src="../nav/user_guide_menu.js"></script>
15
16<meta http-equiv='expires' content='-1' />
17<meta http-equiv= 'pragma' content='no-cache' />
18<meta name='robots' content='all' />
19<meta name='author' content='ExpressionEngine Dev Team' />
20<meta name='description' content='CodeIgniter User Guide' />
21
22</head>
23<body>
24
25<!-- START NAVIGATION -->
26<div id="nav"><div id="nav_inner"><script type="text/javascript">create_menu('../');</script></div></div>
27<div id="nav2"><a name="top"></a><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="myHeight.toggle();"><img src="../images/nav_toggle_darker.jpg" width="154" height="43" border="0" title="Toggle Table of Contents" alt="Toggle Table of Contents" /></a></div>
28<div id="masthead">
29<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width:100%">
30<tr>
Derek Jonesbbedc762009-09-11 14:47:37 +000031<td><h1>CodeIgniter User Guide Version 1.7.2</h1></td>
Derek Allard2067d1a2008-11-13 22:59:24 +000032<td id="breadcrumb_right"><a href="../toc.html">Table of Contents Page</a></td>
33</tr>
34</table>
35</div>
36<!-- END NAVIGATION -->
37
38
39<!-- START BREADCRUMB -->
40<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width:100%">
41<tr>
42<td id="breadcrumb">
43<a href="http://codeigniter.com/">CodeIgniter Home</a> &nbsp;&#8250;&nbsp;
44<a href="../index.html">User Guide Home</a> &nbsp;&#8250;&nbsp;
45Language Class
46</td>
47<td id="searchbox"><form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/search"><input type="hidden" name="as_sitesearch" id="as_sitesearch" value="codeigniter.com/user_guide/" />Search User Guide&nbsp; <input type="text" class="input" style="width:200px;" name="q" id="q" size="31" maxlength="255" value="" />&nbsp;<input type="submit" class="submit" name="sa" value="Go" /></form></td>
48</tr>
49</table>
50<!-- END BREADCRUMB -->
51
52<br clear="all" />
53
54
55<!-- START CONTENT -->
56<div id="content">
57
58
59<h1>Language Class</h1>
60
61<p>The Language Class provides functions to retrieve language files and lines of text for purposes of internationalization.</p>
62
63<p>In your CodeIgniter system folder you'll find one called <dfn>language</dfn> containing sets of language files. You can create
64your own language files as needed in order to display error and other messages in other languages.</p>
65
66<p>Language files are typically stored in your <dfn>system/language</dfn> directory. Alternately you can create a folder called <kbd>language</kbd> inside
67your <kbd>application</kbd> folder and store them there. CodeIgniter will look first in your <dfn>system/application/language</dfn>
68directory. If the directory does not exist or the specified language is not located there CI will instead look in your global
69<dfn>system/language</dfn> folder.</p>
70
71<p class="important"><strong>Note:</strong>&nbsp; Each language should be stored in its own folder. For example, the English files are located at:
72<dfn>system/language/english</dfn></p>
73
74
75
76<h2>Creating Language Files</h2>
77
78<p>Language files must be named with <kbd>_lang.php</kbd> as the file extension. For example, let's say you want to create a file
79containing error messages. You might name it: <kbd>error_lang.php</kbd></p>
80
81<p>Within the file you will assign each line of text to an array called <var>$lang</var> with this prototype:</p>
82
83<code>$lang['language_key'] = "The actual message to be shown";</code>
84
85<p><strong>Note:</strong> It's a good practice to use a common prefix for all messages in a given file to avoid collisions with
86similarly named items in other files. For example, if you are creating error messages you might prefix them with <var>error_</var></p>
87
88<code>$lang['<var>error</var>_email_missing'] = "You must submit an email address";<br />
89$lang['<var>error</var>_url_missing'] = "You must submit a URL";<br />
90$lang['<var>error</var>_username_missing'] = "You must submit a username";</code>
91
92
93<h2>Loading A Language File</h2>
94
95<p>In order to fetch a line from a particular file you must load the file first. Loading a language file is done with the following code:</p>
96
97<code>$this->lang->load('<samp>filename</samp>', '<dfn>language</dfn>');</code>
98
99<p>Where <samp>filename</samp> is the name of the file you wish to load (without the file extension), and <dfn>language</dfn>
100is the language set containing it (ie, english). If the second parameter is missing, the default language set in your
101<kbd>application/config/config.php</kbd> file will be used.</p>
102
103
104<h2>Fetching a Line of Text</h2>
105
106<p>Once your desired language file is loaded you can access any line of text using this function:</p>
107
108<code>$this->lang->line('<samp>language_key</samp>');</code>
109
110<p>Where <samp>language_key</samp> is the array key corresponding to the line you wish to show.</p>
111
112<p>Note: This function simply returns the line. It does not echo it for you.</p>
113
114<h3>Using language lines as form labels</h3>
115
116<p class="important">This feature has been deprecated from the language library and moved to the <kbd>lang()</kbd> function of the <a href="../helpers/language_helper.html">Language helper</a>.</p>
117
118<h2>Auto-loading Languages</h2>
119<p>If you find that you need a particular language globally throughout your application, you can tell CodeIgniter to <a href="../general/autoloader.html">auto-load</a> it during system initialization. This is done by opening the application/config/autoload.php file and adding the language(s) to the autoload array.</p>
120<p>&nbsp;</p>
121</div>
122<!-- END CONTENT -->
123
124
125<div id="footer">
126<p>
127Previous Topic:&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="loader.html">Loader Class</a>
128&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&middot;&nbsp;&nbsp;
129<a href="#top">Top of Page</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&middot;&nbsp;&nbsp;
130<a href="../index.html">User Guide Home</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&middot;&nbsp;&nbsp;
131Next Topic:&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="output.html">Output Class</a>
132</p>
Derek Jones7f3719f2010-01-05 13:35:37 +0000133<p><a href="http://codeigniter.com">CodeIgniter</a> &nbsp;&middot;&nbsp; Copyright &#169; 2006-2010 &nbsp;&middot;&nbsp; <a href="http://ellislab.com/">Ellislab, Inc.</a></p>
Derek Allard2067d1a2008-11-13 22:59:24 +0000134</div>
135
136</body>
adminb0dd10f2006-08-25 17:25:49 +0000137</html>