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Thread tagged as: Question, Addons, Blog

Blog - Switching between languages, even when in a post

Hello,

I am trying to set up a blog in which every post will be written in dutch and english. I have come across multiple ways of doing this, but I'm not sure which way will work best for me.

I would like to be able to switch language when reading a post, so that the title, content etc. will change when clicking on a flag that switches ?lang=nl to ?lang=en and vice versa. I'm guessing that my best option would be to work with conditionals inside my post.html, but will the url also change?

As you can tell I'm a bit confused now, what would be my best option?

  • Mike
Mike Hendriks

Mike Hendriks 0 points

  • 3 years ago
Drew McLellan

Drew McLellan 2638 points
Perch Support

3 years ago

but will the url also change?

Can you explain what you mean?
Mike Hendriks

Mike Hendriks 0 points

3 years ago

Well, if I am using the method of creating a seperate dutch post and an english post, they will both have a different URL. How would I be able to switch between both, when changing language?
Duncan Revell

Duncan Revell 78 points
Registered Developer

3 years ago

I think as you've found, it's not the easiest to set up blog with multiple languages.

Do you need to use blog? Using a standard page at least lets you use a separate region for each langauge, per page (or item).

Otherwise, the only thing I can think of is setting up multiple blogs or sections - one for each language - then you'd need to create a little field type to allow you to choose a post from each blog/section. You'd be manually choosing which language post to link the current post to (and therefore use to "switch" language).

I again think you're going to struggle with blog - if you're using a slug as the unique identifier and you don't want the url to change, which slug "wins" for the url - Dutch or English?
Hussein Al Hammad

Hussein Al Hammad 105 points
Registered Developer

3 years ago

You can have one post for both languages. You need to work on making your edit form template to make it user-friendly though. For example, you can use the divider-before attribute to create some separation and collapsable sections.

Assuming Dutch is the default language:

<perch:blog id="postDescHTML" type="textarea" markdown="true" divider-before="Dutch" />
<perch:blog id="postDescHTML_en" type="textarea" markdown="true" divider-before="Englisgh" />

Each post would have a single slug. You can rely on URL parameters (?lang=nl and ?lang=en) to determine which language to use can work like you suggested. You can display the English post only when ?lang=en, otherwise display the default (Dutch).

perch_get('lang') should get you the value of the lang parameter. perch_get('lang', 'nl') should set lang to nl if there is no lang value in case you need it!

Pass the value to the template with PerchSystem::set_var(). On your post.php:

PerchSystem::set_var('lang', perch_get('lang', 'nl'));

And in your template you can check for lang:

<perch:if id="lang" value="en">
<!--* English post *-->
<perch:blog id="postDescHTML_en" type="textarea" markdown="true"  />
<perch:else/>
<!--* Default Language: Dutch post *-->
<perch:blog id="postDescHTML" type="textarea" markdown="true"  />
</perch:if>