Django solid_i18n urls

solid_i18n contains middleware and url patterns to use default language at root path (without language prefix).

Default language is set in settings.LANGUAGE_CODE.

Requirements

• python (2.7, 3.4, 3.5)
• django (1.8, 1.9)

Release notes

Here

Behaviour

There are two modes:

1. settings.SOLID_I18N_USE_REDIRECTS = False (default). In that case i18n will not use redirects at all. If request doesn't have language prefix, then default language will be used. If request does have prefix, language from that prefix will be used.

2. settings.SOLID_I18N_USE_REDIRECTS = True. In that case, for root paths (without prefix), django will try to discover user preferred language. If it doesn't equal to default language, redirect to path with corresponding prefix will occur. If preferred language is the same as default, then that request path will be processed (without redirect). Also see notes below.

Quick start

1. Install this package to your python distribution:

    pip install solid_i18n
   

2. Set languages in settings.py:

    # Default language, that will be used for requests without language prefix
    LANGUAGE_CODE = 'en'
   
    # supported languages
    LANGUAGES = (
        ('en', 'English'),
        ('ru', 'Russian'),
    )
   
    # enable django translation
    USE_I18N = True
   
    # Optional. If you want to use redirects, set this to True
    SOLID_I18N_USE_REDIRECTS = False
   

3. Add SolidLocaleMiddleware instead of LocaleMiddleware to MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES:

    MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
       'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
       'solid_i18n.middleware.SolidLocaleMiddleware',
       'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    )
   

4. Use solid_i18n_patterns instead of i18n_patterns

    from django.conf.urls import patterns, include, url
    from solid_i18n.urls import solid_i18n_patterns
   
    urlpatterns = solid_i18n_patterns('',
        url(r'^about/$', 'about.view', name='about'),
        url(r'^news/', include(news_patterns, namespace='news')),
    )
   

5. Start the development server and visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/about/ to see english content. Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/ru/about/ to see russian content. If SOLID_I18N_USE_REDIRECTS was set to True and if your preferred language is equal to Russian, request to path http://127.0.0.1:8000/about/ will be redirected to http://127.0.0.1:8000/ru/about/. But if preferred language is English, http://127.0.0.1:8000/about/ will be shown.

Settings

• SOLID_I18N_USE_REDIRECTS = False
  If True, redirect to url with non-default language prefix from url without prefix, if user's language is not equal to default. Otherwise url without language prefix will always render default language content (see behaviour section and notes for details).

• SOLID_I18N_HANDLE_DEFAULT_PREFIX = False
  If True, both urls /... and /en/... will render default language content (in this example 'en' is default language). Otherwise, /en/... will return 404 status_code.

• SOLID_I18N_DEFAULT_PREFIX_REDIRECT = False
  If True, redirect from url with default language prefix to url without any prefix, i.e. redirect from /en/... to /... if 'en' is default language.

• SOLID_I18N_PREFIX_STRICT = False
  Experimental. If True, paths like /my-slug/ will call your view on that path, if language my-slug doesn't exists (here my is supported language).

  Example.

    # settings.py
    LANGUAGES = (
        ('en', 'English'),
        ('my', 'Burmese'),
    )
  
    # urls.py
    urlpatterns = solid_i18n_patterns('',
        url(r'^my-slug/$', some_view),
    )
  

  If SOLID_I18N_PREFIX_STRICT=False, then url /my-slug/ will respond with 404, since language my-slug is not found. This happens, because we have a registered language tag my. Language tag can have form like this:

    language-region
  

  So django in this case tries to find language 'my-slug'. But it fails and that is why django respond 404. And your view some_view will not be called.

  But, if we set SOLID_I18N_PREFIX_STRICT=True, then resolve system will get language only from exact 'my' prefix. In case of /my-slug/ url the prefix is not exact, and our some_view will be found and called.

Example site

Located here, it is ready to use, just install solid_i18n (this package):

pip install solid_i18n

clone example site:

git clone https://github.com/st4lk/django-solid-i18n-urls.git

step in example/ and run development server:

cd django-solid-i18n-urls/example
python manage.py runserver

Notes

• When using SOLID_I18N_USE_REDIRECTS = True, there is some nasty case. Suppose django has determined user preferred language incorrectly (maybe in user's browser preferred language is not equal to his realy preferred language, because for example it is not his computer) and it is Russian. Then on access to url without prefix, i.e. '/', he will be redirected to '/ru/' (according to browsers preferred language). He wants to look english content (that is default language), but he can't, because he is always being redirected to '/ru/' from '/'. To avoid this, it is needed to set preferred language in his cookies (just <a href="{{ specific language url}}"> will not work). For that purporse django's set_language redirect view shall be used. See example in this package.

• Of course, you must specify translation for all languages you've marked as supported. For details look here: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/i18n/translation/.

• Don't mix together settings SOLID_I18N_HANDLE_DEFAULT_PREFIX and SOLID_I18N_DEFAULT_PREFIX_REDIRECT. You should choose only one of them.