Native Language Support
PHP is a great language for developing dynamic web sites. Some do it for fun while others for business. It is true that a great part of the web is in English. However, if you are targeting a worldwide audience, then neither English nor Esperanto alone is an option.
If you need to deliver content in several languages, it is a good idea to explore several alternatives. However, some alternatives may not be suitable for dynamic websites. Added to that, there is the overhead of time spent in maintenance. To further complicate things, your needs may not be totally in line with the resources you have at your disposal. Therefore, it is advisable to choose an alternative that suits you best.
I found myself in positions which required me to deliver content in both English and Spanish, and in one project a third language. Here are the possibilities I explored:
Explicit links for each language
Use Apache's mod_negotiation
Use GNU Gettext support in PHP
Write your own
This article gives a brief introduction to the first three possibilities, but then we will go about the fourth solution which suited the requirements best, given the set of constraints. I am assuming that the reader is at least familiar with PHP programming and the use of PHP classes.
Principles of content negotiation
Before we go into exploring the various options, we should understand the basics of content negotiation and how that applies to the development framework. Then, you will be able to develop a web application that can deliver its content in the language of choice of your visitor.
By simply configuring the web browser, the user can set it up in a way that his or her preferred language is used when available. Several languages can be specified in a prioritized list, by setting up the preferences or option of the browser.
ands this list of preferred languages on every request made to the site. This action is totally transparent to the user, as the information gets sent in the Accept-Language header, for example:
