Rails: Internationalization of Javascript Strings?

Question

So, we have an existing Rails 2.3.5 app that does not support Internationalization at all. Now, I'm well familiar with Rails I18n stuff, but we have a LOT of output strings inside /javascripts/. I'm not a huge fan of this approach, but unfortunately it is too late to fix it now.

How might we internationalize strings stored in JS files in a Rails app? Rails doesn't even serve the JS files...

I'm thinking I could always have the Rails app serve up the JS files, but that seems pretty gross. Are there plugins to do this?

Answer 1

Why not something simple like:

<script type="text/javascript">
  window.I18n = <%= I18n.backend.send(:translations).to_json.html_safe %>
</script>

Then in JS you can do things like:

I18n["en-US"]["alpha"]["bravo"];

I've wrapped mine in an application helper.

def current_translations
  @translations ||= I18n.backend.send(:translations)
  @translations[I18n.locale].with_indifferent_access
end

Then my call in my application.html.erb looks like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
  window.I18n = <%= current_translations.to_json.html_safe %>
</script>

This allows you to avoid having to know the current locale in JavaScript.

I18n["alpha"]["bravo"];

Or

I18n.alpha.bravo;