Multi-language social website - Database driven?

Question

To store multi language content, there is lots of content, should they be stored in the database or file? And what is the basic way to approach this, we have page content, reference tables, page title bars, metadata, etc. So will every table have additional columns for each language? So if there are 50 languages (number will keep growing as this is a woldwide social site, so eventual goal is to have as many languages as possible) then 50 extra columns per table? Or is there a better way?

There is a mixture of dynamic system and user content + static content.

Scalability and performance are important. Being developed in PHP and MySQL.

User will be able to change language on any page from the footer. Language can be either session based or preference based. Not sure what is a better route?

Answer 1

You may find this useful:

• PHP UTF-8 cheatsheet

The article describes how to design the database for multi-lingual website and the php functions to be used.

Answer 2

Definitely start with a well defined model so your design doesn't care whether data comes from a file, db or even memCache or something like that. Probably best to do a single call per page to get an object that contains all the fields for that single page, rather than multiple calls. The you can just reference that single returned object to get each localised field. Behind the scenes you could then code the respository access and test. Personally I'd probably go the DB approach over a file - you don't have to worry about concurrent file access and it's probably easier to deploy changes - again you don't have to worry about files being locked by reads when you're deploying new files - just a db update.

See this link about php ioc, that might help you as that would allow you to abstract from your code what type of respository is used to hold the data. That way if you go one approach and later you want to change it - you won't have to do so much rework.

Answer 3

If you have a variable, essentially unknown today number of languages, than this definately should NOT be multiple columns in a record. Basically the search key on this table should be something like message id plus language id, or maybe screen id plus message id plus language id. Then you have a separate record for each language for each message.

If you try to cram all the languages into one record, your maintenance will become a nightmare. Every time you add another language to the app, you will have to go through every program to add "else if language=='Tagalog' then text=column62" or whatever. Make it part of the search key and then you're just reading "where messageId='Foobar' and language=current_language", and you pass the current language around. If you have a new language, nothing should have to change except adding the new language to the list of valid language codes some place.

Answer 4

So really the question is:

blah blah blah. Should I keep my data in flat files or a database?

Short answer is whichever you find easier to work with. Depending on how you structure it, the file based approach can be faster than the database approach. OTOH, get it wrong and performance impact will be huge. The database approach enforces more consistent structure from the start. So if you make it up as you go along, then the database approach will probably pay off in the long run.

eventual goal is to have as many languages as possible) then 50 extra columns per table?

No.

If you need to change your database schema (or the file structure) every time you add a new language (or new content) then your schema is wrong. If you don't understand how to model data properly then I'd strongly recommend the database approach for the reasons given.

You should also learn how to normalize your data - even if you ultimately choose to use a non-relational database for keeping the data in.