Namespaces / Nested translation keys

[alexbardas]

It sometimes makes sense to group different keys of a component under a namespace:

e.g.:

{
  "form": {
    "cancel": "Cancel",
    "save": "Save"
  }
}

And accessing them like this:

t('form.cancel')

The main selling points are expressiveness and reduced size for the translation json.

It's basically this angular-translate feature.

[bloodyowl]

this is possible, although this can be a breaking change in the current state of it (you can put . in your keys already), if I introduce this, it would likely be with translate()(Component) (with no argument). would this be solving your use-case?

[alexbardas]

It can also be implemented as a non breaking change, but you may not want to do it like this if you consider it would be too confusing.

Consider you have the key form.cancel. If there is no match in the initial Component dictionary and the key has at least one ., then check if key.split('.')[0] is in the dict and its value is an object instead of a string.

[bloodyowl]

this approach would be too implicit and confusing IMO.

[Bertg]

We are working on some namespace system as well. However we don't think namespacing is a component issue; but a translator issue.

We are doing this for the translate method:

translate("Header", "Ui")(Header)

Where Ui is a fallback namespace for the keys to be looked into. We are also using a "global" fallback. So a translations like this: t('Menu') would be sought for in Header.Menu, Ui.Menu and global.Menu. A final fallback is to return the Key itself.

Maybe this can be implemented?

[lloydwatkin]

I'd be looking to do something like this, I'd refer to them as 'shared' translations, my example would be:

translate([ 'Header', 'MenuItems' ])(Header)
/* ..and... */
translate([ 'Footer', 'MenuItems' ])(Footer)

[Bertg]

Hey @lloydwatkin This is exactly what we have settled on in our internal translator.
We did not use this lib, and went for a different approach, but that is exactly what our method signatures now look like.

Internally when the translate function is called, it fetches each of the "shared" translations and merges those objects. This is then passed to the translator.

[lloydwatkin]

Would this work for you @bloodyowl, there wouldn't be a BC break since one is a string and the other an array?

[beau6183]

#12

That PR accomplishes the original ask as:

t('form')['cancel']

However, it does not support pluralization or string expansion in that usage.

[lloydwatkin]

Getting to the point where I require this functionality so have implemented here #13, does not break existing implementations and supports all required features.