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Principles

Although the basics of the i18n mechanism are the same for every part of the ecosystem, the packaging differs if you want to apply this mechanism to the Sonar core platform or to a plugin:

• Making the Sonar core platform available in a new language requires to develop and publish a new Language Pack plugin. By default Sonar embeds the English Pack. All other Language Pack plugins, like the French Pack plugin, are hosted in the plugins forge (https://svn.codehaus.org/sonar-plugins/trunk/l10n/), are maintained by the community and are available through Update Center (category "Localization").

• This is different for plugins, each plugin is in charge to embed its own translations. Of course supporting i18n mechanism is not mandatory for a plugin but in that case it will only be available in the default implemented language.

Translation bundles

There are 2 types of files for localized messages:

Properties files

• These are regular properties files with key/value pairs where you will put most translations
• These files must be stored in the package "org.sonar.l10n" (usually in the directory src/main/resources/org/sonar/l10n)
• The name of these files must respect the convention "<plugin key>_<language>.properties", for example "technicaldebt_fr.properties"

• Messages accept arguments. Such entries would look like:

  myplugin.foo=This is a message with 2 params: the first "{0}" and the second "{1}".
  

HTML files

• They are used for rule descriptions, which might be long and need HTML tags
• These files must be stored in the package org.sonar.l10n.<plugin key>_<language>, for example org.sonar.l10n.checkstyle_fr
• The name of these files must be the key of the rule they translate
• E.g.: the French description of the Squid Architectural Constraint rule is "src/main/resources/org/sonar/i18n/squidjava_fr/ArchitecturalConstraint.html"

Naming conventions for keys

Here are the conventions you have to know about keys :

How to use localized messages ?

Ruby on Rails API

This API is used when implementing Ruby widgets or pages. It's really simple, a single method must be used :

message(property_key, options={})

Options are :

• :default is the default value when the property key does not exist in bundles. If it's not set, then the key itself is returned.
• :params is an array of string message arguments.

Examples :

message('cloud.size')
message('cloud.size', :default => 'Cloud')
message('with.arguments', :params => ['First', 'Two'])
message('with.arguments', :params => ['First', 'Two'], :default => 'Not found')

Of course the Rails framework provides other formatting methods like :

# localize dates or datetimes
l(date_or_time)

GWT API

GWT provides its own mechanisms to internationalize components. The static technique is the most efficient and must be used into Sonar GWT extensions. Read the Google documentation for more details.

Java API

The component org.sonar.api.i18n.I18n is available for server extensions. Batch extensions are not supported yet and can not load bundles.

How to contribute

How to localize a plugin

A plugin can embed its own bundles, for example to translate the labels used in its web extensions. Bundles must be added to src/main/resources with the following convention names :

• Standard messages : org/sonar/l10n/<plugin key>_<language>.properties
• Rule descriptions : org/sonar/l10n/<plugin key>_<language>/*.html

The english bundle is mandatory. For example the plugin with key "technicaldebt" must define the following files in order to enable the french bundle :

• org/sonar/l10n/technicaldebt.properties
• org/sonar/l10n/technicaldebt_fr.properties

How to create a language pack

A language pack defines bundles for the whole Sonar distribution. 

To create a new pack, it's recommended to copy the English bundles and to adapt them to the new language.

The language pack plugin must be executed in the same classloader than the English pack, so the property "basePlugin" must be set to "l10nen" into the configuration of sonar-packaging-maven-plugin (see example).