i must add a language support to an existing Zend 1.12 project. Is it possible to use a html select box to change the language? The only way that i know is to use the "onChange" attribute of the select box to insert a specific js function which can analyze the selected option.
Is it possible to initiate a zend_translate language switch in javascript?
You need to either reload the website on select change or perhaps make an ajax call that will load new html.
Something like this should work for you (and I assume you have language code in your routing):
HTML code:
<select id="languageSwitch">
<option value="en">English</option>
<option value="de">Deutsch</option>
</select>
JS (with jQuery):
$('#languageSwitch').change(function() {
window.location = '/' + $(this).val() + '/';
});
This will reload your page with /en/ or /de/ (based on the choice) appended to the domain name, eg.
http://www.yourwebsite.com/en/
http://www.yourwebsite.com/de/
If you need help setting up your routing, this video should help you.
This sounds like you need locale switching functionality within your application, maybe check out the manual definitions of Zend locales, and store the active locale in the user's session: http://framework.zend.com/manual/1.12/en/zend.locale.functions.html
I would then build a "Pre-Dispatch Plugin" to recognise and modify the active session locale to reflect a GET parameter defined in a drop-down menu selection. There are numerous ways of passing the locale modify parameter, wether you use the "route" approach in the above answer, a simple GET parameter with links, or if you are set on the drop-down locale approach - you could try JQuery, an example: http://jetlogs.org/2007/09/03/jquery-select-boxes-and-change-events/
The easiest is as you said, is an on-change snippet - but that is ugly in the perspective of standards as there is an expectation ont he browser to recognise onchange attributes.
The choie is yours.
