Ruby on Rails - translating activerecord model attributes in ruby on rails- ruby on rails tutorial - rails guides - rails tutorial - ruby rails

globalize gem is a great solution to add translations to our ActiveRecord

We can install it add this to our Gemfile:

gem 'globalize', '~> 5.0.0'

If we're using Rails 5 we will also need to add activemodel-serializers-xml

gem 'activemodel-serializers-xml'

Example

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  translates :title, :text
end

I18n.locale = :en
post.title # => Globalize rocks!

I18n.locale = :he
post.title # => גלובאלייז2 שולט!

Clicking "Copy Code" button will copy the code into the clipboard - memory. Please paste(Ctrl+V) it in your destination. The code will get pasted. Happy coding from Wikitechy - ruby on rails tutorial - rails guides - ruby rails - rubyonrails - learn ruby on rails - team

After we defined our model attributes that need to be translated we have to create a translation table, through a migration. globalize provides create_translation_table! and drop_translation_table!.

For this migration we need to use up and down, and not change. Also, in order to run this migration successfully.
We have to define the translated attributes in our model first, like shown above.
A proper migration for the previous Post model is this:

class CreatePostsTranslationTable < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def up
    Post.create_translation_table! title: :string, text: :text
  end

  def down
    Post.drop_translation_table!
  end
end

Clicking "Copy Code" button will copy the code into the clipboard - memory. Please paste(Ctrl+V) it in your destination. The code will get pasted. Happy coding from Wikitechy - ruby on rails tutorial - rails guides - ruby rails - rubyonrails - learn ruby on rails - team

We may also pass options for specific options

class CreatePostsTranslationTable < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def up
    Post.create_translation_table! title: :string,
      text: { type: :text, null: false, default: "Default text" }
  end

  def down
    Post.drop_translation_table!
  end
end

Clicking "Copy Code" button will copy the code into the clipboard - memory. Please paste(Ctrl+V) it in your destination. The code will get pasted. Happy coding from Wikitechy - ruby on rails tutorial - rails guides - ruby rails - rubyonrails - learn ruby on rails - team

In case we already have any existing data in your needing translation columns, we can easily migrate it to the translations table, by adjusting our migration:

class CreatePostsTranslationTable < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def up
    Post.create_translation_table!({
      title: :string,
      text: :text
    }, {
      migrate_data: true
    })
      
  end

  def down
    Post.drop_translation_table! migrate_data: true
  end
end

Clicking "Copy Code" button will copy the code into the clipboard - memory. Please paste(Ctrl+V) it in your destination. The code will get pasted. Happy coding from Wikitechy - ruby on rails tutorial - rails guides - ruby rails - rubyonrails - learn ruby on rails - team

Note:Make sure we drop the translated columns from the parent table after all our data is safely migrated.
To automatically remove the translated columns from the parent table after the data migration, add the option remove_source_columns to the migration:

class CreatePostsTranslationTable < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def up
    Post.create_translation_table!({
      title: :string,
      text: :text
    }, {
      migrate_data: true,
      remove_source_columns: true
    })
      
  end

  def down
    Post.drop_translation_table! migrate_data: true
  end
end

Clicking "Copy Code" button will copy the code into the clipboard - memory. Please paste(Ctrl+V) it in your destination. The code will get pasted. Happy coding from Wikitechy - ruby on rails tutorial - rails guides - ruby rails - rubyonrails - learn ruby on rails - team

We may also add new fields to a previously created translations table:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  # Remember to add your attribute here too.
  translates :title, :text, :author
end

class AddAuthorToPost < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def up
    Post.add_translation_fields! author: :text
  end

  def down
    remove_column :post_translations, :author
  end
end