Translations from backend

Description

When using AppEngine, you can define your translation resource files directly in your project plugin. If you created a plugin with CompuTecthe AppEngine Plugin Template, the translation file is already added and registered. Translations require the following to work:

1. The translations file is an XML file with the following structure:

   Translations file structure

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   <messageTranslations xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
   
   <Message id="[translationID]" param="0">
       <translation lang="[language]" Date="[Translation Adding date]">[Translated text for given Language]</translation>
       <translation lang="[language2]" Date="[YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss]">[Translated text for given Language]</translation>
   </Message>
   
   <Message id="[translationID2]" param="0">
       <translation lang="[language]" Date="[Translation Adding date]">[Translated text for given Language]</translation>
       <translation lang="[language2]" Date="[Translation Adding date]">[Translated text for given Language]</translation>
   </Message>
   
   </messageTranslations>

   • id (translationID) – id that will be used in the UI5 app

   • lang (language) – a translation element for a given language.

     List of possible languages

     Default
     ln_Polish
     ln_English
     ln_German
     ln_Arabic
     ln_Chinese
     ln_Czech_Cz
     ln_Danish
     ln_Dutch
     ln_Finnish
     ln_French
     ln_Greek
     ln_Hebrew
     ln_Hungarian
     ln_Italian
     ln_Japanese_Jp
     ln_Korean_Kr
     ln_Norwegian
     ln_Portuguese
     ln_Portuguese_Br
     ln_Russian
     ln_Serbian
     ln_Slovak_Sk
     ln_Spanish
     ln_Spanish_Ar
     ln_Spanish_La
     ln_Spanish_Pa
     ln_Swedish
     ln_TrdtnlChinese_Hk
     ln_Turkish_Tr
     ln_Ukrainian

   • date (Translation adding date) – Date of adding translations in XSD DateTime format <YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss>

2. Definition of TranslationStreamDelegate in PluginInitializer.

   

3. Pointing to backend translation in Plugin manifest.json by adding an i18n element to the sap.app.

   "i18n": "plugins/<Plugin Route>/I18n/i18n.properties"

   • Plugin Route - The Plugin Route is defined when creating a Plugin from the wizard. You can find this value in the AppEngine plugin manifest.json.

     

   • Example

     

Using internationalization in UI5 applications

If you created a Plugin Project from the, you can already check translations on Home.view.xml. The following screenshot shows how it works.

• In Home.view.xml file we defined binding for header of Generic Tile to {i18n>todoTileHeader} and subheder o {i18n>todoTileSubheader}. This is the standard way of defining translations in UI5.
• Translations IDs (todoTileHeader, todoTileSubheader) can be found in messages.xml. Based on the selected language (English in this example), the correct text is returned by AppEngine.

Example of adding a translation to the Sales Orders list

In this example, we will add translations to our example from Creating a Custom View.

1. Let open SalesOrder.view.xml.

2. Now we will change Table Title text and column Texts to use translations:

   

3. To do this we just need to bind this properties to i18n and provide id. We will change

   • <Title text="Sales Orders List"/> to <Title text="{i18n>salesOrderTableTitle}"/>
   • <Text text="Document Number"/> to <Text text="{i18n>salesOrderDocumentNumberColumnLabel}"/>
   • <Text text="Busines Partner"/> to <Text text="{i18n>salesOrderBusinessPartnerColumnLabel}"/>

   

4. Now, we need to add translations for the added translations ID to the messages.xml file.

   messages.xml

   <Message id="salesOrderTableTitle" param="0">
   <translation lang="Default" Date="2011-08-09T15:55:59">Sales Orders</translation>
   <translation lang="ln_English" Date="2011-08-09T15:55:59">Sales Orders</translation>
   <translation lang="ln_Polish" Date="2011-08-09T15:55:59">Zlecenia sprzedaży</translation>
   </Message>
   <Message id="salesOrderDocumentNumberColumnLabel" param="0">
   <translation lang="Default" Date="2011-08-09T15:55:59">Document Number</translation>
   <translation lang="ln_English" Date="2011-08-09T15:55:59">Document Number</translation>
   <translation lang="ln_Polish" Date="2011-08-09T15:55:59">Number dokumentu</translation>
   </Message>
   <Message id="salesOrderBusinessPartnerColumnLabel" param="0">
   <translation lang="Default" Date="2011-08-09T15:55:59">Business Partner</translation>
   <translation lang="ln_English" Date="2011-08-09T15:55:59">Business Partner</translation>
   <translation lang="ln_Polish" Date="2011-08-09T15:55:59">Business Partner</translation>
   </Message>

5. Now, we need to rebuild the plugin project. Start AppEngine and refresh the plugin to see the changes. (Restart is needed only to refresh messages.xml file).