Getting Started Internationalizing (i18n) with Intlayer and Vite and Preact

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What is Intlayer?

Intlayer is an innovative, open-source internationalization (i18n) library designed to simplify multilingual support in modern web applications.

With Intlayer, you can:

• Easily manage translations using declarative dictionaries at the component level.
• Dynamically localize metadata, routes, and content.
• Ensure TypeScript support with autogenerated types, improving autocompletion and error detection.
• Benefit from advanced features, like dynamic locale detection and switching.

Step-by-Step Guide to Set Up Intlayer in a Vite and Preact Application

Step 1: Install Dependencies

Install the necessary packages using npm:

npm install intlayer preact-intlayer vite-intlayer

• intlayer

  The core package that provides internationalization tools for configuration management, translation, content declaration, transpilation, and CLI commands.

• preact-intlayer The package that integrates Intlayer with Preact application. It provides context providers and hooks for Preact internationalization.

• vite-intlayer Includes the Vite plugin for integrating Intlayer with the Vite bundler, as well as middleware for detecting the user's preferred locale, managing cookies, and handling URL redirection.

Step 2: Configuration of your project

Create a config file to configure the languages of your application:

import { Locales, type IntlayerConfig } from "intlayer";const config: IntlayerConfig = {  internationalization: {    locales: [      Locales.ENGLISH,      Locales.FRENCH,      Locales.SPANISH,      // Your other locales    ],    defaultLocale: Locales.ENGLISH,  },};export default config;

Through this configuration file, you can set up localized URLs, middleware redirection, cookie names, the location and extension of your content declarations, disable Intlayer logs in the console, and more. For a complete list of available parameters, refer to the configuration documentation.

Step 3: Integrate Intlayer in Your Vite Configuration

Add the intlayer plugin into your configuration.

import { defineConfig } from "vite";import react from "@vitejs/plugin-react-swc";import { intlayerPlugin } from "vite-intlayer";// https://vitejs.dev/config/export default defineConfig({  plugins: [react(), intlayerPlugin()],});

The intlayerPlugin() Vite plugin is used to integrate Intlayer with Vite. It ensures the building of content declaration files and monitors them in development mode. It defines Intlayer environment variables within the Vite application. Additionally, it provides aliases to optimize performance.

Step 4: Declare Your Content

Create and manage your content declarations to store translations:

import { t, type Dictionary } from "intlayer";const appContent = {  key: "app",  content: {},} satisfies Dictionary;export default appContent;

Your content declarations can be defined anywhere in your application as soon they are included into the contentDir directory (by default, ./src). And match the content declaration file extension (by default, .content.{json,ts,tsx,js,jsx,mjs,mjx,cjs,cjx}). For more details, refer to the content declaration documentation.

Step 5: Utilize Intlayer in Your Code

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(Optional) Step 6: Change the language of your content

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(Optional) Step 7: Add localized Routing to your application

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(Optional) Step 8: Change the URL when the locale changes

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(Optional) Step 9: Switch the HTML Language and Direction Attributes

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(Optional) Step 10: Creating a Localized Link Component

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Git Configuration

It is recommended to ignore the files generated by Intlayer. This allows you to avoid committing them to your Git repository.

To do this, you can add the following instructions to your .gitignore file:

# Ignore the files generated by Intlayer.intlayer

VS Code Extension

To improve your development experience with Intlayer, you can install the official Intlayer VS Code Extension.

Install from the VS Code Marketplace

This extension provides:

• Autocompletion for translation keys.
• Real-time error detection for missing translations.
• Inline previews of translated content.
• Quick actions to easily create and update translations.

For more details on how to use the extension, refer to the Intlayer VS Code Extension documentation.

Go Further

To go further, you can implement the visual editor or externalize your content using the CMS.