elm-gettext

An Elm package for internationalization (i18n) using GNU gettext MO/PO files. This library allows you to load compiled binary translation files (.mo) and translate text at runtime in your Elm application.

Features

• Simple t, tn, tp, tpn API for translation functions
• Support for string formatting with {placeholder} syntax
• Plural form support following gettext plural-form rules
• Context-aware translations to disambiguate identical strings
• Load translations from binary MO files (compiled from PO files)

Installation

Add this package to your Elm project:

elm install panthus/elm-gettext

Workflow

A typical i18n workflow looks like this:

1. Write your Elm code using t, tn, tp, tpn functions for all translatable strings

   Note that translatable strings cannot be dynamically passed to the translation functions (via variables, loaded from somewhere etc), because the extraction tool requires static strings to be able to extract them into a .pot file.

2. Extract strings from your code into a .pot template file using @panthus/elm-xgettext

3. Create/update .po files from the .pot file for each target language

4. Translate the strings in each .po file (using POEdit or similar)

5. Compile .po files to .mo binary files using @panthus/elm-xgettext

6. Load the .mo files at runtime in your application

Example

See the example/ directory for a complete working example demonstrating:

• Loading translations from MO files
• Switching languages at runtime
• Using all translation functions (t, tn, tp, tpn)