Yii 2 multitranslation - php

Question

How to enable multitranslation in yii 2 basic framework? I have tried, but it is not working. I get no error, but translation is not showing. Code:
public function actionLang(){
$lang = \Yii::$app->request->get('lang');
if($lang && in_array($lang,['en-US','ar-SA'])){
$cookie = new Cookie();
$cookie->name = '_lang';
$cookie->value = $lang;
$cookie->expire = time() + 60 * 60 * 24 * 180;
\Yii::$app->response->cookies->add($cookie);
}
$this->redirect(['index']);
}
I'm using this function in SiteController.

Answer 1

Internationalization in Yii is not a one-action job. Here's the documentation on how to make your website multilingual:
https://github.com/yiisoft/yii2/blob/master/docs/guide/tutorial-i18n.md
If docs are unclear, here is a tutorial:
http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/programming-with-yii2-localization-with-i18n--cms-23140
If you have gone through all the steps and merely wish to set the current language, you can use:
\Yii::$app->language = 'xxx';
where xxx is a language code in accordance with ISO 639-2.
Here are the mentioned standard's entries:
http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php

Answer 2

First of all, from what I have gathered, you are trying to identify a language requested from the current request by doing $lang = \Yii::$app->request->get('lang'); and then set it in the cookie. In my opinion, this should be used as a "helper", meaning, it is useful to know the language preference of the returning client, but you still have to manage languages via URL, i.e. http://yoursite.com/en or http://yoursite.com/de should serve different languages.
Now, there are actually very good plugins out there for multilingual URL management, such as yii2-localeurls , which you can find here. I use it in production in multiple projects and highly recommend it.
To actually manage translations, you have to have a folder in the root of your project (if you are using advance template, you should have it inside frontend/backend/console ) to store the actual block translations, call it messages .
Now, under #app/messages create folders for each non-default language, for example #app/messages/de for German translations.
If you go your config in #app/config/main.php, look for i18n key inside the components array. If you can't find such a key, simply put the following into the components array:
'i18n' => [
'translations' => [
'app*' => [
'class' => 'yii\i18n\PhpMessageSource',
'basePath' => '#app/messages',
'sourceLanguage' => 'en',
'fileMap' => [
'app' => 'app.php',
'app/error' => 'error.php',
],
],
'*' => [
'class' => 'yii\i18n\PhpMessageSource',
]
],
],
Now, you will need to create a translation file inside the relevant directory. In the above configuration, we declared that the default language used is en, that means that all original messages would be in English. Go to #app/messages/de and create a translations file inside that directory. You can call it whatever you like, but for this example, call it site.php.
In this site.php put the following:
return [
'Translate this!' => 'Your relevant translation here in whichever language',
'Translate this also!!!' => 'Stuff...'
];
If all done correctly, when you access your page via http://yousite.com/de, when using Yii::t('site', 'Translate this!') you should be getting 'Your relevant translation here in whichever language' instead.
The beauty of Yii 2 is that it is extremely well documented. Visit the official documentation if you are stuck, it really explains everything quite well.