Drupal 6 JavaScript and jQuery - Ebook-Cours.com

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Chapter 5
The string looks like this: The URL for @siteName is !url. There are two
placeholders in this string, @siteName and !url. When the Drupal.t() function is
executed, the placeholders will be replaced by values from the params object.
In this case, @siteName will be replaced by Example.Com, and !url will be replaced
by http://example.com/. So the English rendering of the string would be The URL
for Example.Com is http://example.com/.
But wait! There are a couple of details to fill in. First of all, why are we using
placeholders in the first place? And second, what are the @ and ! signs for?
In answer to the first question, placeholders should be used for any values that
should not be translated. The example uses a proper name for @siteName and a URL
for !url. In cases like this, translation would be unnecessary. Presumably, the site
name and URL are the same in all languages.
This is a simple case where placeholders might be used. However, it's not all that
common in practical cases.
A more realistic use of placeholders is to substitute it in values that are not known
at translation time. To elaborate the example, consider the case where the site name
and site URL are retrieved from some other object. Let's say we have an object called
SiteInfo that contains this information (This is a fictional example. There is no
such object.)
Our params object might look like this instead:
var params = {
"@siteName": SiteInfo.name,
"!url": SiteInfo.url
};
Here, the values of these variables may not be known until runtime, long after the
translation has been generated. So using placeholders clearly makes sense.
Translations are created by humans, and the process of translation is
mostly handled manually. We will see this process in a few minutes.
But nothing magical happens at runtime. Translated strings are simply
substituted for the default (usually English-language) text.
Placeholders are then used in cases where values need to be inserted into a translated
string, but where the values themselves should not be translated as part of that string.
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Richard Ostheimer on 18th June 2009
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