timeago lang configuration

[crownedgrouse]

Hi,
it is not clear how to configure 'timeago' language in revel, different from 'en'.
Code look to refer to a default language in Config, but no documentation about that.
Any clue ?

[notzippy]

The source code should help with this.

[crownedgrouse]

Yes from what I understand, a second arg can specify lang,
but I still do not understand this , later in code :

lang, _ = Config.String(defaultLanguageOption)

BTW, documentation is missing on this.

[notzippy]

That only occurs if the language passed in is empty, so it would default to the global configuration value set in the config i18n.default_language. Which appears to be undocumented configuratuin option :-(

[crownedgrouse]

Yes I tried to set to "fr" in Config, but instead to have
"about a second ago"
I got
"??? about a second ??? ??? ago ???"

I will try to dig further and propose a documentation if I understand what's going on ...

[notzippy]

Sounds like you are missing the french translations for about a second and ago. the way the function works is the configuration map timeAgoLangs caches the message translations for everything in the MessageFunc call

	timeAgoLangs[lang] = timeago.Config{
		PastPrefix:   "",
		PastSuffix:   " " + MessageFunc(lang, "ago"),
		FuturePrefix: MessageFunc(lang, "in") + " ",
		FutureSuffix: "",
		Periods: []timeago.FormatPeriod{
			{time.Second, MessageFunc(lang, "about a second"), MessageFunc(lang, "%d seconds")},
			{time.Minute, MessageFunc(lang, "about a minute"), MessageFunc(lang, "%d minutes")},
			{time.Hour, MessageFunc(lang, "about an hour"), MessageFunc(lang, "%d hours")},
			{timeago.Day, MessageFunc(lang, "one day"), MessageFunc(lang, "%d days")},
			{timeago.Month, MessageFunc(lang, "one month"), MessageFunc(lang, "%d months")},
			{timeago.Year, MessageFunc(lang, "one year"), MessageFunc(lang, "%d years")},
		},
		Zero:          MessageFunc(lang, "about a second"),
		Max:           73 * time.Hour,
		DefaultLayout: "2006-01-02",
	}

So you need to define in the french translation file what ago means and about a second and so on...

[crownedgrouse]

OK, but by looking at timeago code, there is already a bunch of variables for several languages https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/xeonx/timeago#pkg-variables
So it is a pity having to set it, as code reading is required to list all strings to translate...

What about use those by default and set a config variable to fall back in current behavior?

[crownedgrouse]

See PR #1564