Laravel Translation via Google Spreadsheet

nikaia translation-sheet (https://github.com/nikaia/translation-sheet)

Websites nowadays are needed to support multi-lingual, in order to reach more people in many countries. Along with fast growth of technologies, we have a lot of framework equipped with packages.

This time I’d like to write about one of my favorite framework, Laravel, along with a package by Nikaia. This package use Google Spreadsheet to facilitate team collaboration. As you know that Google Spreadsheet is real time cloud-synchronized, this makes possible to access and edit at the same time without making any conflict with another team member.

# Installation

• Install package

$ composer require nikaia/translation-sheet

• Add service provider to your ‘config/app.php’

Nikaia\TranslationSheet\TranslationSheetServiceProvider::class,

• Configuration can be done via environments variables, but if you prefer you can override the configuration by publishing the package config file using :

$ php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Nikaia\TranslationSheet\ServiceProvider"

# Google API

• Go to https://console.developers.google.com/
• Create a new project
• Activate Sheet API for the project:
  Go to Library > Search Google Sheet API > Select it > Enable
• Create a Service Account and Credentials
  - Go to Credentials
  - Click Create Credentials
  - Choose Service Account Key
  - Choose A New Service Account in the Service account select
  - Choose a name. (ie. This is the name that will show up in the Spreadsheet
  history operations), “Editor” as role and “JSON” for the key type.
  - Save the credentials to ‘resources/google/service-account.json’ folder.
  (You can choose another name/folder if you want in your application
  folder)
  - Make sure to write down the service account email, you will need it later
  for the package configuration.

# Spreadsheet

• Create a blank/new spreadsheet here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/ .
• Share it with the service account email with Can edit permission

# Configuration

In your .env file or in your published config file (config/translation_sheet.php)

• Set service account email
  TS_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL=***@***.iam.gserviceaccount.com
• Set path to the downloaded service account credentials
  TS_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_CREDENTIALS_FILE=resources/google/service-account.json
• Set ID of the spreadsheet that we will be using for translation
  TS_SPREADSHEET_ID=xxxx
• Set locales of the application (separated by comma)
  TS_LOCALES=fr,en,es

# Usage

• Setup the spreadsheet (only once)

$ php artisan translation_sheet:setup

• Prepare the sheet (to avoid conflicts, run this command to rewrite the locale languages files)

$ php artisan translation_sheet:prepare

• Publish translation to sheet

$ php artisan translation_sheet:push

• Lock translations on the spreadsheet (the sheet will be disabled for edit)

$ php artisan translation_sheet:lock

• Unlock translations on the spreadsheet

$ php artisan translation_sheet:unlock

• Pull translations (this will write languages files in your applications. You can use git diff here to make sure everything is ok)

$ php artisan translation_sheet:pull

• Open spreadsheet in browser

$ php artisan translation_sheet:open

Note: Don’t forget to share your spreadsheet to your team.

You can follow this package’s updates in Nikaia github.

Thanks for reading. I hope this article can be a big help for your multi language website problem. Feel free to leave comments below if you have any questions. Cheers!

“If you talk to a man in a language he understand, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” ~ (Nelson Mandela)