multi-language site organization

[eluser]beseku[/eluser]
Hey Mit ...

Our whitelabel CMS is entirely language independant - it takes a lot of work and quite a bit of extension of CI to prevent hair pulling. The stuff we did that would be of help to you is ...

1) Create a function, (mine is in the extended config library and called in the controller constructor) that looks for a language change in the URI then the session. If this is found, it updates the session and sets the CI default language accordingly.

Code:

function get_langs() {
    $CI =& get_instance();
    
    $default_language = $this->item('language');
    $languages = $this->item('languages');
    
    preg_match('/\?language=(' . implode('|', $languages) . ')$/', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $get);
    
    if (count($get) == 2) {
    
        $default_language = $get[1];
        $get = array();
        
    } elseif (in_array($CI->session->userdata('gcms_language'), $languages)) {
        $default_language = $CI->session->userdata('gcms_language');
    }
    
    $this->set_item('language', $default_language);
    $this->set_item('languages', $languages);
    $CI->session->set_userdata(array('gcms_language' => $default_language));
}

2) Extend the language loader class to look for a language then fall back to a default, (in this case 'english', because I am) - It means your site won't break if lang files are missing ...

3) I then use mod_rewrite to map /en/news/2007 to /news/2007/?language=en, just to make things a bit simpler in CI.