Placeholders substitution in language strings

Category:Internationalization

From time to time is useful to have an ability to modify language string from language file dynamically. I'm using the following functions:

[code] <? $lang['user_logged_out'] = "User %s has been logged out";

#this functions takes variable number of parameters, calls second function #which replaces %s placeholders with these parameters in appropriate order. function lang($msg) { $args = func_get_args();

if(is_array($args)) array_shift($args);

if(is_array($args) && count($args))
{
    foreach($args as $arg)
    {
        $msg = str_replace_first('%s', $arg, $msg);
    }
}
return $msg;

} function str_replace_first($search_for, $replace_with, $in) { $pos = strpos($in, $search_for); if($pos === false) { return $in; } else { return substr($in, 0, $pos) . $replace_with . substr($in, $pos + strlen($search_for), strlen($in)); } } ?> [/code]

Example: [code] <?=lang($lang['user_logged_out'], $username);?> [/code]

Messages than sound more naturally. I believe this helps someone and it would by nice if something like this could be part of language class in standard CI distro.

Other solution is to extend CI_Language class and replace the original line() method: [code] /** * Fetch a single line of text from the language array * Replace argument placeholders with values * * Usage: * # this msg is in your language file * $lang['hello_key'] = "Hello %s, you are visitor number %d"; * ... * $this->lang->load('hello_language_file_name','english'); * $msgvalues = array("Peter",21); * $msg = $this->lang->line('hello_key', $msgvalues);
* * @access public * @param string the language line key * @param mixed argument or array of arguments * @return string */

function line( $line_key = '', $args = '' ) {
    if ($line_key == '' OR ! isset($this->language[$line_key])) {
        return FALSE;
    }
    $line_string = $this->language[$line_key];
    if ($args == '') {
        return $line_string;
    }
    else if (is_array($args)) {
        return vsprintf($line_string, $args);
    }
    else {
        return sprintf($line_string, $args);     
    }
}

[/code]