PHP - parse a value outcome to HTML

Question

Hello, I want to use something like this in a PHP file:

$about = array ('dutch' => 'over', 'spanish' => 'sobre', 'english' => 'about');
if ($USER['lang'] == 'dutch'){
 // $about - becomes 'over' 
   } 
elseif ($USER['lang'] == 'spanish') {
// $about - becomes 'sobre'
  }
else {
// $about - becomes 'about'
}

And transfer the outcome to a HTML file. I was thinking I use {about} in the HTML page to print the outcome.

Does anybody know how to do this???

Answer 1

You want to set up a multi-language page. The simplest way to access the words would be using an array

if ($USER["lang"] == "dutch")

$words = array("about" => "over",
                 "word1" => "translation1",
                 "word2" => "translation2");

...

echo $words["about"]; // Outputs the correct word for "about"

If it's a bigger project with many words, you may want to look at a full-blown internationalization solution like the Zend Framework's Zend_Translation. It allows you to store the translations in many different formats, including XML files, text files, or a database for speed.

Answer 2

Using the same code structure that you have currently:

$about = array ('dutch' => 'over', 'spanish' => 'sobre', 'english' => 'about');

if ($USER['lang']) {
    echo $about[$USER['lang']];
} else {
    echo 'about';
}

Make sure that $USER['lang'] is properly sanitised/verified

This solution is only ideal if you have a few words to translate. If you would like to do any more than this then you should investigate using a complete translation library.

Here are several translation libraries that you might like to check out:

• Zend Translate
• Translation2 and guide

Edit: Alternatively, you could use a switch. This means that you don't have to compare $USER['lang'] against a list of available languages.

switch ($USER['lang']) {
    case 'dutch':
        $about = 'over';
    case 'spanish':
        $about = 'sobre';
    default:    //if $USER['lang'] doesn't match any of the
                //cases above, do the following:
        $about = 'about';
}