Internationalization with vue-i18n (Part 1)

This is part 1of a series on internalization with vue-i18n. Find part 2 here.

This tutorial will show you how to use the module vue-i18n to handle internalization in your Vue app.

Installation

Assuming you already have a Vue project set up, install vue-i18n using npm.

$ npm install vue-i18n

After that, you need to enable the plugin in your main app file (main.js).

import Vue from 'vue'
import App from './App'
import router from './router'
import VueI18n from 'vue-i18n'
Vue.use(VueI18n)
Vue.config.productionTip = false
/* eslint-disable no-new */
new Vue({
  el: '#app',
  router,
  template: '<App/>',
  components: { App }
})

Usage

Now you need to setup your local messages in the same file.

const messages = {   
  en: {     
    message: {       
      hello: 'hello world'     
    }   
  },   
  fr: {     
   message: {       
     hello: 'Bonjour monde'     
   }   
  } 
}

And create a vueI18n instance:

const i18n = new VueI18n({
  locale: 'fr', // set locale
  messages // set locale messages
})

Your i18n instance will then be added to your project vue instance:

new Vue({
  i18n,
  el: '#app',
  template: '<App/>',
  components: { App }
})

Your main file should then look like this:

import Vue from 'vue'
import App from './App'
import VueI18n from 'vue-i18n'
Vue.use(VueI18n)
Vue.config.productionTip = false
const messages = {
  en: {
    message: {
      hello: 'hello world'
    }
  },
  fr: {
   message: {
    hello: 'Bonjour monde'
    }
  }
}
// Create VueI18n instance with options
const i18n = new VueI18n({
  locale: 'fr', // set locale
  messages // set locale messages
})
/* eslint-disable no-new */
new Vue({
  i18n,
  el: '#app',
  template: '<App/>',
  components: { App }
})

In your template, add the following markup:

<p>{{ $t("message.hello") }}</p>

Then launch your app, with:

$ npm run dev

Your code should output:

<p>Bonjour monde</p>

as we have set locale to ‘fr’.

If you change in your code to ‘en’, your app reload and your code should output:

<p>Hello world</p>

Wrapping up 🎉

That’s it for part 1 of this tutorial! In part 2 we’ll see some advanced features of vue-i18n that will be useful for your app!

The project is available on github:

jpfong/vue-i18n-tutorial-part1

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