Notice: Not in active development

This project is not currently being actively developed. The released v1 still works (to my knowledge) but reached end of life in 2016. I am not working on any multi-language projects at this time, but may resume work on this when I do. v2 would be a pure-npm (non-Meteor specific) package. Thank you everyone everyone for all your many years of support!

meteor-messageformat (v2)

MessageFormat i18n support, the Meteor way.

Easy reactive use of complicated strings (gender, plural, etc) with insanely easy translation into other languages (through a web UI).

Features

• Super powerful language use via the industry gold standard, MessageFormat
• Super easy translation via automatic string extraction and translation UI
• Super easy integration via automatic locale set on moment, parsley, etc
• Super fast loading, caching, etc. Works with BrowserPolicy, appcache, etc.
• Offline support (including changing of languages while offline)
• Integrates with autoform, momentjs, parsleyvalidator, cmather:handlebars-server

For full info, docs and examples, see the Meteor MessageFormat home page (or install/clone the smart package and run meteor in its website directory). For this pre-release, some info on the site is out of date, and all info in the READMEs will supercede info on the site (for now).

See the end of this README for a showcase of sites built with meteor-messageformat!

Support for Meteor <= 1.2.1 (End of Life)

At some point later this year (2016), support for Meteor versions below 1.3 will be dropped. You will continue to be able to use your last installed version of msgfmt - indefinitely - but later updates will rely - in a non-backwards-compatible manner - on featuers provided by Meteor 1.3. This co-incides with MDG's roadmap to deprecate Atmosphere and move all core Meteor packages to npm.

New versions will still be on Atmosphere for some time to come, since we are heavily coupled to the Meteor build system for a lot of our "magic". But we'd like to start using ES6+ features and gradually prepare the code for a possible generic npm release in the long term.

v2 pre-release

THIS IS AN IN-DEVELOPMENT RELEASE. YOU SHOULD NOT BE USING IT UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING. SEE THE VERY END OF THIS DOCUMENT FOR SOME MORE HELP.

Current versions of each package (requires manual, explicit updates until the stable release; consider backing up your database before upgrading):

meteor add msgfmt:core@2.0.0-preview.23         # 2016-09-05

# released packages
meteor add msgfmt:extract                       # 2016-04-01 (v2.0.0)
meteor add msgfmt:ui                            # 2016-06-22 (v2.0.0)

# use on of these depending
meteor add msgfmt:react                         # 2016-03-14 (v2.0.0) - Meteor 1.3+
meteor add msgfmt:react@2.0.0-meteor12          # 2016-03-14 (v2.0.0) - Meteor 1.2

If you don't want the UI translator on production (i.e. no crowd translation), instead of adding msgfmt:ui, add msgfmt:ui-dev-only (no need to specify version).

Subpackage READMEs: msgfmt:core | msgfmt:extract | msgfmt:ui | msgfmt:react

Quick Start

The most common configuration involves:

$ meteor add msgfmt:core msgfmt:extract msgfmt:ui

In your common code (for client + server), add:

msgfmt.init('en');

where en should be your "native" language, i.e. the language all your strings are in before any translation occurs. You can supply an optional second argument with a key-value dictionary of configuration values, see the docs for more.

Setup your strings like this:

<h1>{{mf 'heading_welcome' 'Welcome to my Site'}}</h1>
<p>{{mf 'welcome_name' 'Welcome, {NAME}' NAME=getUserName}}</p>

For more complicated examples, see the examples page. For more information about different options, see the docs.

To translate your strings, go to /translate in your app, available by default to any registered user. See the docs about custom security policies.

More info

Testing

Msgfmt requires Meteor's "full application" test mode to work properly with tests, i.e. meteor test --full-app. Particularly, if you're calling msgfmt.init('en') in, say, lib/config.js - it's important to understand that Meteor completely ignores this file in 'regular' test mode. For more information, please see issue #242.

Optional Settings

Defaults are shown below.

msgfmt.init('en', {
  // Send translations for all languages or current language
  sendPolicy: "current",

  // Don't invalidate msgfmt.locale() until new language is fully loaded
  waitOnLoaded: true,
  // Automatically adjust <body dir="rtl"> according to the language used
  setBodyDir: true,

  // Save setLocale() in Meteor.user().locale, sync to multiple clients
  storeUserLocale: true,

  // Use client's localStorage to avoid reloading unchanged translations
  useLocalStorage: true // unless sendCompiled: true,
  // Send translations to the client pre-compiled
  sendCompiled: false // unless browserPolicy disallowUnsafeEval is set
});

Cordova

There's an issue with the inject-initial package under Cordova which causes information to not be properly hooked to the client. To counter this, you may define the locales of the application in the settings file, under the public element.

{
  "public": {
    ...,
    "msgfmt": {
      "native": "en",
      "locales": ["en", "fr"]
    }
  }
}

Debug logging

Before init:

msgfmt.init('en', {
  logLevel: 'debug'   // or 'trace'
})

At runtime:

Package['jag:pince'].Logger.setLevel('msgfmt', 'debug'); // or 'trace'

Events

msgfmt.on('localeChange', function(locale) {
  doSomethingWith(locale);
});

or

Tracker.autorun(function() {
  doSomethingWith(msgfmt.locale());
});

Integrating with other packages

The following calls are done automatically if the package exists:

• moment.locale()
• ParsleyValidator.setLocale()

Reactivity

All {{mf ...}} strings are reactive and depend on the locale. When changing locales, all strings on the currently viewed page will update, without any further action or reloading.

• msgfmt.locale() is a reactive dependency on the current locale. When calling setLocale(), the value might only change when language data is ready, depending on the value of msgfmt.waitOnLoaded.

• msgfmt.lang() is a reactive dependency on the current language. This is only the language component of the locale, not the dialect / cultural / regional settings. e.g. locale en_US has a lang of en.

• msgfmt.dir() is a reactive dependency on the writing direction of the current language, either ltr or rtl. By default, msgfmt.setBodyDir = true and we'll change set the dir attribute on your page's body tag (which you can leverage with appropriate CSS rules).

• msgfmt.loading() is a reactive dependency which returns the currently loading locale if msgfmt.waitOnLoaded = true, or returns false when everything is loaded. Useful for UI hints to the user.

Differences from v0

• The main package is now msgfmt:core.

• The translation UI is now a separate package, msgfmt:ui. By default, it's deployed to production too. If you want translation in your dev environment only, use msgfmt:ui-dev-only instead (not both).

• mf_extract is no more. Install msgfmt:extract and forget about it, everything is automatic.

• The main package namespace is now msgfmt and not mfPkg. However, mfPkg still exists as an alias so no need to change existing code.

• Use msgfmt.setLocale(locale) to set the locale.

• We now store the client's locale on the server per-connection. This means that calling mf() from inside a method or publish will automatically and correctly output the correct language.

• During initial page load, language data is loaded in parallel with a 2nd http request. This is cached in localStorage if msgfmt.useLocalStorage = true. On subsequent visits, only new/changed strings are downloaded.

• Offline support is now official. In the future, we'll bundle the languages into the client package as part of the Cordova built process, for 100% offline support without ever needing to connect once.

• disallowUnsafeEval is now supported.

• If msgfmt.storeUserLocale = true (default), setLocale() will also store the locale in Meteor.user().locale and sync across multiple instances.

Pre release usage

• Backup your database! (Particularly your mf* collections)
• Save your most recent mfAll.js translations
• Delete mfExtract.js and the mf* collections, e.g. meteor shell and then:

> mfPkg.mfStrings.remove({});
337
> mfPkg.mfMeta.remove({});
23
> mfPkg.mfRevisions.remove({});
707

• Stop meteor. Remove gadicohen:messageformat, add
  • msgfmt:core
  • msgfmt:ui
  • msgfmt:extract
• Run Meteor and check that everything is working.

Underlying Library Change

In v0 we used @SlexAxton's MessageFormat.js, but switched in v2 to the FormatJS project. MessageFormat.js is more focused as a server side library with precompilation. We initially offered the precompilation feature as an option (which also solved a longstanding issue with BrowserPolicy's disallowUnsafeEval), but resulted in much more data needing to be sent to the client (i.e. slower loading times), and needing to maintain code to handle both types of sending in different situations. FormatJS was created using some common code for similar reasons, and is now collaborating with Alex for shared code on both projects (particularly message parsing). So ultimately, no change is needed on user strings and FormatJS was a better bit for this type of project and what we want to offer our users.

Integrations

autoform

Use Blaze subexpressions or see Wiki.

cmather:handlebars-server

example.handlebars

  {{mf 'hello' 'Hello there, {NAME}' NAME=NAME LOCALE=LOCALE}}

example.js

  var out = Handlebars.templates['example']({
    NAME: 'Chris',
    LOCALE: 'en_US'
  });

momentjs

Transparent integration. Calls moment.locale() on locale change.

Parsley Validator

Transparent integration. Calls ParsleyValidator.setLocale() on locale change.

Sites built with Meteor-MessageFormat

• Openki.net - Crowd-sourced Education (there's a sandbox too!) - @1u and @sbalmer
• White Rabbit Express - Buy from Japan - @Maxhodges

A huge thank you to the above sites and authors for your continued faith and support in meteor-messageformat over the years, all the way from our early days! Your bug hunting, PRs and vocal support have been critical to this project and my motivation in maintaining it. Thank you so much!