Switching Joomla's language on-the-fly

[Rimas Kudelis]

Hello,

I want to write a small plugin for Joomla, which would do the following:
1. check if language is set for the current menu item,
1.1. if not, check if language is set for the currently displayed item,
2. if we have the language after step 1, switch Joomla to use that
language (for dates, standard links etc.).

I would also like to avoid any HTTP redirects or cookie dependencies.

My questions are:
Is there a way to switch Joomla's language from a plugin?
If yes, then how?
What event should I listen to in the plugin?
What type of the plugin should it be? I tried both Content and System
plugins, but still couldn't make the language to switch without an
additional redirect...

Thanks in advance for any clues.
Rimas Kudelis

[Ed Stafford]

Just as an aside, could you also look at any browser information and retrieve the language set from that?

2009/9/28 Rimas Kudelis <r...@akl.lt>

[Rimas Kudelis]

Yes, I can, but in my case, this only makes sense when the user is visiting the homepage, and not any of the inner pages.

Rimas

[Ian MacLennan]

I would try:

$systemLanguage = &JFactory::getLanguage();
$myLanguage = &JLanguage::getInstance('en-GB'); //substitute your language code
$systemLanguage = $myLanguage;

Ian

[Rimas Kudelis]

Thanks Ian!

I've added your lines to a system plugin's onAfterRoute function, and they seem to work well. However, if I add the lines to a content plugin (or to system plugin's onAfterDispatch function), they no longer have enough effect.
Hence, I have another problem: how can I access current menu item and current article from onAfterRoute?

TIA,
Rimas

[Ian MacLennan]

$app = &JFactory::getApplication();
$menu = &$app->getMenu();
$menuItem = &$menu->getActive();

$articleId = JRequest::getInt('id'); // provided it is an article we are viewing

Ian

[akede]

Hi Rimas,

If you look at the Joom!Fish extension ( http://www.joomfish.net ) and
within our JFRouter plugin you will find most of the code you are
looking for. Joom!Fish does this check in a system plugin and sets the
browser or other language directly for your system

Cheers

Alex

> >>     2009/9/28 Rimas Kudelis <r...@akl.lt <mailto:r...@akl.lt>>

[Rimas Kudelis]

Thanks again Ian!

2009.09.28 23:10, Ian MacLennan rašė:
> $app = &JFactory::getApplication();
> $menu = &$app->getMenu();
> $menuItem = &$menu->getActive();

Apparently, I could also just add the following line to make my previous
code work:
jimport( 'joomla.application.menu' );

> $articleId = JRequest::getInt('id'); // provided it is an article we
> are viewing

Provided that I have the id, is there an easy way to access the article
from onAfterRoute?

Rimas

[Rimas Kudelis]

Hi all,

I still haven't got any answer to my question below. I hope you don't
mind me re-asking:

[Louis Landry]

Well if you have the id you can use JTableContent to load the article data

$article = JTable::getInstance('content');

$article->load($articleId);

then $article is populated with the data for the article.

- Louis

--
Development Coordinator
Joomla! ... because open source matters.
http://www.joomla.org

[Rimas Kudelis]

Thank you Louis!

This is exactly what I needed!

Rimas

[Debreczeni András]

We may also need to check for debug language configuration as
follows:

$systemLanguage = &JFactory::getLanguage();
$myLanguage = &JLanguage::getInstance( 'en-GB' );

$conf =& JFactory::getConfig();
$debug = $conf->getValue('config.debug_lang');
$myLanguage->setDebug($debug);

$systemLanguage = $myLanguage;

András