django: Language-aware Drop-down

Question

I am new to django and i am loving it so far especially its nice community. Here is my question: I have this model

class Nationality(models.Model):
  nationality_fr = models.CharField(max_length=50)
  nationality_en = models.CharField(max_length=50)
  show_flag = models.BooleanField()
  display_order = models.PositiveSmallIntegerField()

  def __str__(self):
    return self.nationality_fr

I want to change the __ str __ function to return nationality_fr if the language selected (by the user) is "fr" and language_en if the selected language is "en". the reason i need this is because i am showing a drop-down for selecting nationalities for the user to choose and he/she should see the choices in his/her language. what is the best to way to deal with this?

Note: I know there is a nice app for countries but i should be able to do that for other scenarios other than this countries scenario.

Just out of curiosity, what do you actually store in the two nationality fields? (What I'm eluding to is why don't you just use the internationalization methods?) — Sayse, May 06 '16 at 20:45
hi @Sayse, nice hearing from u again. i will store the name of the country in English and in French. can u elaborate please on how to use i18n methods to solve this? — John-Silver, May 06 '16 at 20:58

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 06 '16 at 21:10

The simplest method is get_language(), that tells you the language in the current thread based on settings.LANGUAGE_CODE setting.

from django.utils.translation import get_language

def __str__(self):
    if get_language().startswith('fr'):
        return self.nationality_fr
    else:
        return self.nationality_en

If you let Django set the language dynamically, based on request parameters like URL substring or browser header, use django.utils.translation.get_language_from_request instead (since Django 1.8). See docs here

yeah i want to use the language from request not from settings. now the problem is how would i get a hold of the request from within the model definition? — John-Silver, May 06 '16 at 22:27

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 11 '16 at 00:29

After some research, i found the solution: django.utils.translation.get_language(). It returns the language used in the current thread and u can use it in models like so:

from django.utils import translation

@property
def nationality(self):
    lang = translation.get_language()
    if lang == "fr":
        return self.nationality_fr
    else:
        return self.nationality_en

def __str__(self):
    return self.nationality

django: Language-aware Drop-down

2 Answers2