Internationalization with i18next + react-i18n 🌎

#javascript #react #braziliandevs #beginners

Hey, this is just a example, on my machine worked!

It's important to know how to deal with multiple kinds of users, and the one of the most important barriers is the language so it's very important that your project has some sort of internationalization.
There are many forms implement Internationalization on you project, but the quickest and easiest i found was with i18next + react-i18n.

How to:

Create your project (i use vite):

npm create vite@latest

Add i18next + react-i18n to your project

 npm install react-i18next i18next --save

Create a folder called lib and create a file called i18n.ts: > should look like this

import i18n from "i18next";
import { initReactI18next } from "react-i18next";

i18n.use(initReactI18next).init({
  resources: {},
  lng: "en", // the default language you want on your project

});

Create another folder on src called locale, there you can add your .json files, on this example i created two:
- en.json for English and pt.json for Portuguese:
- en.json

{
    "translation":{
        "header": "Our Header",
        "footer": "Our Footer {{year}}"
    }
}

pt.json

{
    "translation":{
        "header": "Nosso Cabeçalho",
        "footer": "Nosso Rodape {{year}}"
    }
}

Now go back on your `i18n.ts` file:

should look like this

import i18n from "i18next";
import { initReactI18next } from "react-i18next";

//Add the translation files
import enTranslations from "../locale/en.json";
import ptTranslations from "../locale/pt.json";

i18n.use(initReactI18next).init({
  resources: {

    en: { ...enTranslations },

    pt: { ...ptTranslations },

  },
  lng: "en",

});

Final Steps!

Go on your main.tsx file and import the i18n.ts file:

import "./lib/i18n.ts";

Now we have to make usage of this, let's go on App.tsx

Let's add the useTranslation hook:

  const {
    t,
    i18n: { changeLanguage, language },
  } = useTranslation();

Create a useState just switch between the languages:

const [currentLang, setCurrentLang] = useState(language);

Create a simple function to switch the languages:

  const switchLang = () => {

    const newLang = currentLang === "en" ? "pt" : "en";

    changeLanguage(newLang);

    setCurrentLang(newLang);
  };

Change your App.tsx so we can test our theory!

Should look like this

 return (

    <>

      <h1>{t("header")}</h1>

      <button type="button" onClick={switchLang}>
        Change Language manually
      </button>

      <footer>
        <h1>{t("footer", { year: new Date().getFullYear() })}</h1>
      </footer>

    </>

  );

As you can see, to use the translation we have to pass the t from useTranslation with the tokens we created on our .json languages.

Result

On English!

On Portuguese!

I Hope this could helped you somehow!

How to find me?

Github: https://github.com/guim0
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guim0-dev/

Top comments (10)

Niklas Buchfink • Feb 8

Good article! I can recommend using i18next with the VS code extension and the Fink localization editor from inlang.
@guim0 I would like to hear your thoughts on the i18n library ParaglideJS, which offers type-safety and a more efficient approach to message splitting than i18next.

Disclaimers: I'm working on inlang, but they are free, open-source tools that will ease some i18n-related pain.

Guimo • Feb 8

Thanks @niklasbuchfink! I've never heard about those tools, but I'm pretty sure they can help improve productivity, I'll test those and give you a shout-out!