Is it possible to duplicate a key? --new

Rails
1

Im not very familiar with RoR so this question might be kind of silly.
I want to store strings from different lenguages in a database. I want
to have the key for the string in english be the ‘key’ for all the
corresponding traslations of that string. For example:
(database columns)
lenguage-------------key-----------------value-----
english hello “hello worl”
spanish hello “hola mundo”
french hello “Bon jour xxxxx”

the point here is that all strings from diff. lenguages share the same
key. I was thinking of creating three different tables and link them
(if possible) and then somehow override the key of the other lenguges
with the english string key…is this possible? Or is it better to
store all strings from diff. lenguges in the same table and override the
keys from the other lenguages with the one in english?

I hope someone can help me out!

thanks much

2

Hi Rob,

Just have a look at globalize plugin, it is very similar to your
question (and perhaps you can even use it):

You can see that unicity is on the pair [tr_key,language_id]:

CREATE TABLE globalize_translations (
id int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
type varchar(255) default NULL,
tr_key varchar(255) default NULL,
table_name varchar(255) default NULL,
item_id int(11) default NULL,
facet varchar(255) default NULL,
language_id int(11) default NULL,
pluralization_index int(11) default ‘1’,
text text,
PRIMARY KEY (id),
KEY globalize_translations_tr_key_index (tr_key,language_id),
KEY globalize_translations_table_name_index
(table_name,item_id,language_id)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

GlobalizePlugin: http://www.globalize-rails.org/wiki/

Jean-Etienne

3

i think the relationship is

key has many values/translations
language belongs to key
language has one values/translations

I don’t know how the underlying table structure will look like but you
can
have similar table structure

Language table PK language_id i.e. ‘English’
Key table PK key_id i.e. ‘Hello’
Translation table PK value_id i.e. “hola mundo”, this table will have
foreign keys from Language and Key table

I hope this helps get you started I may be missing a thing or 2 about
key
and language relationship

-daya

4

Hi Jean-Etienne thanks for your help.

I read about globalize plugin (the link you sent me) and I got the
feeling that this service would be more translating actual strings…is
that right?

thanks

5

Rob,

I gave you this link just because you want to achieve something similar,
not for the purpose itself :slight_smile:

This plugin allows you to do internalization in a very simple manner.
For example, just write “foo”.t in your views. According to the current
language, it will convert this value (key) to the language specific
form.
Just have a look, it does a lot more than this (date, currency …)

Jean-Etienne