How to retrieve all translations from yml files in Rails I18n

Question

I'm guessing that rails stores all the parsed translations yml files in a sort of array/hash. Is there a way to access this?

For example, if I've a file:

en:
  test_string: "testing this"
  warning: "This is just an example

Could I do something like, I18n.translations_store[:en][:test_string] ? I could parse the yml file with YAML::load, but in my case I've splitted the yml files in subfolders for organization, and I'm pretty sure that rails already parsed them all.

Answer 1

The default I18n backend is I18n::Backend::Simple, which does not expose the translations to you. (I18.backend.translations is a protected method.)

This isn't generally a good idea, but if you really need this info and can't parse the file, you can extend the backend class.

class I18n::Backend::Simple
  def translations_store
    translations
  end
end

You can then call I18n.backend.translations_store to get the parsed translations. You probably shouldn't rely on this as a long term strategy, but it gets you the information you need right now.

Answer 2

You got to call a private method on the backend. This is how you get access:

translations = I18n.backend.send(:translations)
translations[:en][:test_string] # => "testing this"