<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <title>CodeIgniter User Guide : Language Class</title> <style type='text/css' media='all'>@import url('../userguide.css');</style> <link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' media='all' href='../userguide.css' /> <script type="text/javascript" src="../nav/nav.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../nav/prototype.lite.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../nav/moo.fx.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../nav/user_guide_menu.js"></script> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <meta http-equiv='expires' content='-1' /> <meta http-equiv= 'pragma' content='no-cache' /> <meta name='robots' content='all' /> <meta name='author' content='ExpressionEngine Dev Team' /> <meta name='description' content='CodeIgniter User Guide' /> </head> <body> <!-- START NAVIGATION --> <div id="nav"><div id="nav_inner"><script type="text/javascript">create_menu('../');</script></div></div> <div id="nav2"><a name="top"></a><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="myHeight.toggle();"><img src="../images/nav_toggle.jpg" width="153" height="44" border="0" title="Toggle Table of Contents" alt="Toggle Table of Contents" /></a></div> <div id="masthead"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width:100%"> <tr> <td><h1>CodeIgniter User Guide Version 1.6.1</h1></td> <td id="breadcrumb_right"><a href="../toc.html">Table of Contents Page</a></td> </tr> </table> </div> <!-- END NAVIGATION --> <!-- START BREADCRUMB --> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width:100%"> <tr> <td id="breadcrumb"> <a href="http://codeigniter.com/">CodeIgniter Home</a> › <a href="../index.html">User Guide Home</a> › Language Class </td> <td id="searchbox"><form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/search"><input type="hidden" name="as_sitesearch" id="as_sitesearch" value="codeigniter.com/user_guide/" />Search User Guide <input type="text" class="input" style="width:200px;" name="q" id="q" size="31" maxlength="255" value="" /> <input type="submit" class="submit" name="sa" value="Go" /></form></td> </tr> </table> <!-- END BREADCRUMB --> <br clear="all" /> <!-- START CONTENT --> <div id="content"> <h1>Language Class</h1> <p>The Language Class provides functions to retrieve language files and lines of text for purposes of internationalization.</p> <p>In your CodeIgniter system folder you'll find one called <dfn>language</dfn> containing sets of language files. You can create your own language files as needed in order to display error and other messages in other languages.</p> <p>Language files are typically stored in your <dfn>system/language</dfn> directory. Alternately you can create a folder called <kbd>language</kbd> inside your <kbd>application</kbd> folder and store them there. CodeIgniter will look first in your <dfn>system/application/language</dfn> directory. If the directory does not exist or the specified language is not located there CI will instead look in your global <dfn>system/language</dfn> folder.</p> <p class="important"><strong>Note:</strong> Each language should be stored in its own folder. For example, the English files are located at: <dfn>system/language/english</dfn></p> <h2>Creating Language Files</h2> <p>Language files must be named with <kbd>_lang.php</kbd> as the file extension. For example, let's say you want to create a file containing error messages. You might name it: <kbd>error_lang.php</kbd></p> <p>Within the file you will assign each line of text to an array called <var>$lang</var> with this prototype:</p> <code>$lang['language_key'] = "The actual message to be shown";</code> <p><strong>Note:</strong> It's a good practice to use a common prefix for all messages in a given file to avoid collisions with similarly named items in other files. For example, if you are creating error messages you might prefix them with <var>error_</var></p> <code>$lang['<var>error</var>_email_missing'] = "You must submit an email address";<br /> $lang['<var>error</var>_url_missing'] = "You must submit a URL";<br /> $lang['<var>error</var>_username_missing'] = "You must submit a username";</code> <h2>Loading A Language File</h2> <p>In order to fetch a line from a particular file you must load the file first. Loading a language file is done with the following code:</p> <code>$this->lang->load('<samp>filename</samp>', '<dfn>language</dfn>');</code> <p>Where <samp>filename</samp> is the name of the file you wish to load (without the file extension), and <dfn>language</dfn> is the language set containing it (ie, english). If the second parameter is missing, the default language set in your <kbd>application/config/config.php</kbd> file will be used.</p> <h2>Fetching a Line of Text</h2> <p>Once your desired language file is loaded you can access any line of text using this function:</p> <code>$this->lang->line('<samp>language_key</samp>');</code> <p>Where <samp>language_key</samp> is the array key corresponding to the line you wish to show.</p> <p>Note: This function simply returns the line. It does not echo it for you.</p> <h2>Auto-loading Languages</h2> <p>If you find that you need a particular language globally throughout your application, you can tell CodeIgniter to <a href="../general/autoloader.html">auto-load</a> it during system initialization. This is done by opening the application/config/autoload.php file and adding the language(s) to the autoload array.</p> <p> </p> </div> <!-- END CONTENT --> <div id="footer"> <p> Previous Topic: <a href="loader.html">Loader Class</a> · <a href="#top">Top of Page</a> · <a href="../index.html">User Guide Home</a> · Next Topic: <a href="output.html">Output Class</a> </p> <p><a href="http://codeigniter.com">CodeIgniter</a> · Copyright © 2006-2008 · <a href="http://ellislab.com/">Ellislab, Inc.</a></p> </div> </body> </html>