How to automatically reflect changes when adding PHP cookie? - php

Question

My website by default is in English
But I can change the language, when a visitor visits our website with a url of a news item in Spanish:
example.com/es/news/718/url-title-article/
The url given as an example is a news in Spanish since the first folder or directory is named "es" example.com/es/news/718/url-title-article/ -> es
And, that's where the trick comes, since I have a function that allows me to obtain the name of the first folder or directory and if it matches with the given parameters, it should set a cookie with the language of that url, in this case Spanish -> "es".
if($FOLDER_LANG === "es" || $SUBDOMAIN_LANG === "es") {
setcookie ('language', 'es', time()+60*60*24*365, '/', 'example.com');
}
if(isset($_COOKIE['language'])){
if($_COOKIE['language']==='en'){
$WEBSITE_TITLE = " | WebSIte EN";
$LANG = 'en';
$language = "en";
}elseif($_COOKIE['language']==='es'){
$WEBSITE_TITLE = " | WebSite ES";
$LANG = 'es';
$language = "es";
}
} else {
$WEBSITE_TITLE = " | WebSite DEFAULT EN";
$LANG = 'en';
$language = "en";
}
But the problem, is that I have to reload the page to see the changes of the new language added to the site.
So how can you solve it without having to reload the site.

Answer 1

You need to write the logic which determines the language so it doesn't depend on the cookie.
So, before, where you might have had something like:
$language_data = get_i18n_data( $_COOKIES['language'] );
You would instead have something like:
function get_language() {
if($FOLDER_LANG === "es" || $SUBDOMAIN_LANG === "es") {
setcookie ('language', 'es', time()+60*60*24*365, '/', 'example.com');
return 'es'
}
return $_COOKIES['language'];
}
$language_data = get_i18n_data( get_language() );

Answer 2

The reason for refresh being needed is that $LANG and $language is set by an existing cookie and not the new one.
Analysing your code:
if($FOLDER_LANG === "es" || $SUBDOMAIN_LANG === "es") {
setcookie ('language', 'es', time()+60*60*24*365, '/', 'example.com');
}
Here, it's setting the cookie only in the header. It is not accessible until the page is reloaded.
One option is to add the following in the if condition:
$LANG = 'es';
$language = "es";
The rest of your code then reads existing cookies so this is what will load on the same page even if the cookie is set just before it:
A better way in my opinion is to keep it simple and expandable by using variable $language to drive the data:
$language = 'en'; //this is default
if(isset($_COOKIE['language'])){
$language = $_COOKIE['language'];
}
//now check if current $language is different to folder
if($FOLDER_LANG != $language || $SUBDOMAIN_LANG != $language) {
//this is condition depends on your variables. You might need && if both conditions should be met or modify as required
//set the language for this page (so no need for refresh and also set the cookie
$language = $FOLDER_LANG ? $FOLDER_LANG : $SUBDOMAIN_LANG; //sets to folder or sudomain language code if $FOLDER_LANG is empty. You can switch the two folders to priotorise the latter.
//now set the cookie
setcookie ('language', $language, time()+60*60*24*365, '/', 'example.com');
}
//now set the the title and the extra variable $LANG (you probably should choose one variable to use)
$WEBSITE_TITLE = " | WebSite . strtoupper($language)";
$LANG = $language;
Now you can support more languages and also won't need to refresh