gettext-utils

A set of utils to extract strings from JS application to .pot file, merge it with existing .po files and / import these strings back to a react-targem or lioness compatible .json file / validate that all the strings are translated before release

Installation

npm i --save-dev gettext-utils

Usage

• export-strings [input-files-glob] [output] [--default-locale=locale] [--po-files-path] parse through all the files provided in input-files-glob (src/**/{*.js,*.jsx,*.ts,*.tsx} by default) (uses glob) and generate .pot file in the output path (./src/i18n/template.pot by default). Then searches for all the .po files in the same directory and updates them with new strings to translate. If default-locale is provided (e.g. en) and this locale's .po file exists in the same folder (e.g. en.po), this file will be populated with the translations automatically. You can specify additional path(s) to update .po files by using --po-files-path your/custom/folder your/other/directory.
• import-strings [po-files-path] [output] [--optimize=true] [--split-by-locale=false] parse all the .po files inside the directory provided as po-files-path (./src/i18n/ by default) and generate react-targem or lioness compatible .json file in the output path (./src/i18n/translations.json), which is an object with each locale as a key and gettext-parser object for this locale as a value. By default all translations.json are optimized, e.g. all unnecessary fields are removed. Pass --no-optimize or --optimize=false to disabled optimizations. You can also pass --split-by-locale option to write translations for different locales into separate files.
• merge-translations [po-files-dir-path] [template-path] merge updated .pot file with .po. Done automatically by export-strings command. If default-locale is provided (e.g. en) and this locale's .po file exists in the same folder (e.g. en.po), this file will be populated with the translations automatically.
• validate-strings [po-files-dir-path] [template-path] validate all .po files inside po-files-dir-path (./src/i18n/ by default) to have all the translations in the .pot file provided in template-path (./src/i18n/template.pot by default).

Use-case

For example, you have a react project in src folder and you want to use react-targem or lioness to translate your application.

Init

1. npm i --save react-targem or npm i --save lioness
2. npm i --save-dev gettext-utils
3. Write your first translatable string with <T> component or withTranslations HOC.
4. npx gettext-utils export-strings to create a src/i18n/template.pot file.
5. Open it with POEdit and create locale files from it in the same folder (including the default locale, e.g. en)
6. Create a prestart and prebuild scripts inside scripts section of your package.json: "prestart": "gettext-utils import-strings" to generate translations.json file automatically.
7. Include /src/i18n/translations.json file inside your .gitignore (this file is generated automatically).
8. Add gettext-utils export-strings --default-locale=en && git add src/i18n/* in any precommit hook you are using, so the translations will be exported automatically (husky).

Translate

1. There are plenty of tools, that connect to your git repository with an online translation tool (eg. POEditor or open-source Weblate).
2. Translators can translate all the application in the develop branch before relase.

Release

1. You can run npx gettext-utils validate-strings to make sure that everything is translated before each release.