i18n-tasks

i18n-tasks helps you find and manage missing and unused translations.

The default approach to locale data management with gems such as i18n is flawed. If you use a key that does not exist, this will only blow up at runtime. Keys left over from removed code accumulate in the resource files and introduce unnecessary overhead on the translators. Translation files can quickly turn to disarray.

i18n-tasks improves this by i18n-tasks analysing code statically, without running it. It scans calls such as I18n.t('some.key') and provides reports on key usage, missing, and unused keys. It can also pre-fill missing keys, including from Google Translate, and it can remove unused keys as well.

i18n-tasks can be used with any project using i18n (default in Rails), or similar, even if it isn't ruby.

Installation

Add to Gemfile:

gem 'i18n-tasks', '~> 0.5.1'

Usage

Run i18n-tasks to get the list of tasks with short descriptions.

$ i18n-tasks
Usage: i18n-tasks [command] [options]
    -v, --version      Print the version
    -h, --help         Display this help message.

Available commands:

  missing             show missing translations
  unused              show unused translations
  translate-missing   translate missing keys with Google Translate
  add-missing         add missing keys to the locales
  find                show where the keys are used in the code
  normalize           normalize translation data: sort and move to the right files
  remove-unused       remove unused keys
  config              display i18n-tasks configuration
  xlsx-report         save missing and unused translations to an Excel file
  irb                 irb session within i18n-tasks context

See `<command> --help` for more information on a specific command.

Add missing keys

You can add missing values, generated from the key (for base locale) or copied from the base locale (for other locales). To add missing values to the base locale only:

# most task accept locales as first argument. `base` and `all` are special
i18n-tasks add-missing base
# add-missing accepts a placeholder argument, with optional base_value interpolation
i18n-tasks add-missing -p 'PLEASE-TRANSLATE %{base_value}' fr

Google Translate missing keys

Translate missing values with Google Translate (more below on the API key).

i18n-tasks translate-missing
# accepts from and locales options:
i18n-tasks translate-missing --from base es fr

Sort the keys and write them to their respective files with i18n-tasks normalize. This always happens on i18n-tasks add-missing and i18n-tasks translate-missing.

i18n-tasks normalize

Find usages

See where the keys are used with i18n-tasks find:

i18n-tasks find common.help
i18n-tasks find 'auth.*'
i18n-tasks find '{number,currency}.format.*'

Find / remove unused keys

i18n-tasks unused
i18n-tasks remove-unused

Features

Relative keys (t '.title') and plural keys (key.{one,many,other,...}) are fully supported. Scope argument is supported, but only when it is the first keyword argument (improvements welcome):

```ruby
# this is supported
t :invalid, scope: [:auth, :password], attempts: 5
# but not this
t :invalid, attempts: 5, scope: [:auth, :password]
```

Unused report will detect certain dynamic key forms and not report them, e.g.:

t 'category.' + category.key      # all 'category.*' keys are considered used
t "category.#{category.key}.name" # all 'category.*.name' keys are considered used

Translation data storage, key usage search, and other settings are compatible with Rails by default.

Configuration

Configuration is read from config/i18n-tasks.yml or config/i18n-tasks.yml.erb. Inspect configuration with i18n-tasks config.

You can generate a config file with:

i18n-tasks config > config/i18n-tasks.yml

Locales

By default, base_locale is set to en and locales are inferred from the paths to data files. You can override these in the config:

# config/i18n-tasks.yml
base_locale: en
locales: [es, fr] # This includes base_locale by default

Storage

The default data adapter supports YAML and JSON files.

# config/i18n-tasks.yml
data:
  # configure YAML / JSON serializer options
  # passed directly to load / dump / parse / serialize.
  yaml:
    write:
      # do not wrap lines at 80 characters (override default)
      line_width: -1

Multiple locale files

Use data options to work with locale data spread over multiple files.

data.read accepts a list of file globs to read from per-locale:

# config/i18n-tasks.yml
data:
  read:
    # read from namespaced files, e.g. simple_form.en.yml
    - 'config/locales/*.%{locale}.yml'
    # read from a gem (config is parsed with ERB first, then YAML)
    - "<%= %x[bundle show vagrant].chomp %>/templates/locales/%{locale}.yml"
    # default
    - 'config/locales/%{locale}.yml'

Key pattern syntax

syntax	description
*	matches everything
:	matches a single key
{a, b.c}	match any in set, can use : and *, match is captured

For writing to locale files i18n-tasks provides 2 options.

Pattern router

Pattern router organizes keys based on a list of key patterns, as in the example below:

data:
  router: pattern_router
  # a list of {key pattern => file} routes, matched top to bottom
  write:
    # write models.* and views.* keys to the respective files
    - ['{models,views}.*', 'config/locales/\1.%{locale}.yml']
    # or, write every top-level key namespace to its own file
    - ['{:}.*', 'config/locales/\1.%{locale}.yml']
    # default, sugar for ['*', path]
    - 'config/locales/%{locale}.yml'

Conservative router

Conservative router keeps the keys where they are found, or infers the path from base locale. If the key is completely new, conservative router will fall back to pattern router behaviour. Conservative router is the default router.

data:
  router: conservative_router
  write:
    - 'config/locales/%{locale}.yml'

Custom adapters

If you store data somewhere but in the filesystem, e.g. in the database or mongodb, you can implement a custom adapter. Implement a handful of methods, then set data.adapter to the class name; the rest of the data config is passed to the initializer.

# config/i18n-tasks.yml
data:
  # file_system is the default adapter, you can provide a custom class name here:
  adapter: file_system

Usage search

Configure usage search in config/i18n-tasks.yml:

# config/i18n-tasks.yml
# i18n usage search in source
search:
  # search these directories (relative to your Rails.root directory, default: 'app/')
  paths:
    - 'app/'
    - 'vendor/'
  # include only files matching this glob pattern (default: blank = include all files)
  include:
    - '*.rb'
    - '*.html.*'
    - '*.text.*'
  # explicitly exclude files (default: blank = exclude no files)
  exclude:
    - '*.js'
  # you can override the default key regex pattern:
  pattern: "\\bt[( ]\\s*(:?\".+?\"|:?'.+?'|:\\w+)"

To configure paths for relative key resolution:

# config/i18n-tasks.yml
# directories containing relative keys
relative_roots:
  # default:
  - app/views
  # add a custom one:
  - app/views-mobile

It is also possible to use a custom key usage scanner by setting search.scanner to a class name. See this basic pattern scanner for reference.

Fine-tuning

Tasks may incorrectly report framework i18n keys as missing, also some patterns may not be detected. When all else fails, use the options below.

# config/i18n-tasks.yml
# do not report these keys as unused
ignore_unused:
  - category.*.db_name

# do not report these keys as missing (both on blank value and no key)
ignore_missing:
  - devise.errors.unauthorized # ignore this key
  - pagination.views.*         # ignore the whole pattern
  # E.g to ignore all Rails number / currency keys:
  - 'number.{format, percentage.format, precision.format, human.format, currency.format}.{strip_insignificant_zeros,significant,delimiter}'
  - 'time.{pm,am}'

# do not report these keys when they have the same value as the base locale version
ignore_eq_base:
  all:
    - common.ok
  es,fr:
    - common.brand

# do not report these keys ever
ignore:
  - kaminari.*

Google Translate

i18n-tasks translate-missing requires a Google Translate API key, get it at Google API Console. Put the key in GOOGLE_TRANSLATE_API_KEY environment variable or in the config file.

# config/i18n-tasks.yml
translation:
  api_key: <Google Translate API key>

Interactive Console

i18n-tasks irb starts an IRB session in i18n-tasks context. Type guide for more information.

RSpec integration

You might want to test for missing and unused translations as part of your test suite. This is how you can do it with rspec:

# spec/i18n_spec.rb:
require 'spec_helper'
require 'i18n/tasks'

describe 'I18n' do
  let(:i18n) { I18n::Tasks::BaseTask.new }

  it 'does not have missing keys' do
    count = i18n.missing_keys.leaves.count
    fail "There are #{count} missing i18n keys! Run 'i18n-tasks missing' for more details." unless count.zero?
  end

  it 'does not have unused keys' do
    count = i18n.unused_keys.leaves.count
    fail "There are #{count} unused i18n keys! Run 'i18n-tasks unused' for more details." unless count.zero?
  end
end

XLSX

Export missing and unused data to XLSX:

i18n-tasks xlsx-report

HTML

While i18n-tasks does not provide an HTML version of the report, you can add one like this.