underi18n.js

underi18n is a minimalistic approach to internationalization for javascript-based templates. It can work in conjuction with other libraries providing the templates, such as underscore or moustache. It supports variable substitution.

Catalogs

underi18n uses a simple JSON format for catalogs, following the standard gettext format. In the following example,

{
    'Developer': 'Προγραμματιστής',
    'Role ${role} does not exist in ${context}': 'Ο ρόλος ${role} δεν υπάρχει στο ${context}'
}

we have two translation strings, the second one with two variables, role and context. A simple python script is provided to help you convert standard .mo files to this JSON format.

Usage

Create a MessageFactory from a json i18n catalog:

var t = underi18n.MessageFactory(catalog);

You can now translate inline:

t('Developer') // returns "Προγραμματιστής"

t('Role ${role} does not exist in ${context}', {role: 'διαχειριστής', context: 'πρόγραμμα'})
// Returns "Ο ρόλος διαχειριστής δεν υπάρχει στο πρόγραμμα"

Templates

Typically variables in templates are indicated with some delimiter. In mustache for instance {{ var }} is used whereas <%= var %> is default for underscore. We use the same approach to indicate translatable strings. You can specify the delimiters for translatable strings as a RegExp, as well as the left/right delimiters used by your template language of choice in underi18n.templateSettings. By default this is following underscore conventions:

templateSettings: {
    translate: /<%_([\s\S]+?)%>/g,
    i18nVarLeftDel: '<%=',
    i18nVarRightDel: '%>'
}

so, <%_ i18n %> are set to denote translatable strings and <%= var %> is used to denote variables inside a template.

You can translate a template by calling underi18n.template, for example using underscore, you can do

var templ = _.template(underi18n.template(myTemplate, t));

Example

Given the following catalogs, factories and template for english and greek and assuming an underscore template,

var test_en = {
        'files_label': 'Files',
        'num_files': 'There are ${num} files in this folder'
    },

    templ = '<h1><%= title %></h1>' +
            '<label><%_ files_label %></label>' +
            '<span><%_ num_files %></span>',

    t_en = underi18n.MessageFactory(test_en);
    t_el = underi18n.MessageFactory(test_el);

the template can by constructed by,

var toRender = _.template(underi18n.template(templ, t_en));
toRender({title: 'Summary', num: 3});

would yield

<h1>Summary</h1>
<label>Files</label>
<span>There are 3 files in this folder</span>

AMD loading & node.js support

underi18n will register as an anonymous module if you use requireJS or export as a module in node.