Add language overrides to template

Question

Version Joomla 3.4.2

In our current set-up we would like to able to add the language override folder to the current template folder and then we could achieve 3 things:

1. We would be able to update the translations with the upload of the new template.
2. We would be able to quickly batch edit the ini file via Template Manager / Customise template.
3. We could version control the constant updates of translation overrides by keeping the override folder inside the template

I am aware there exist the possibility to manually edit the ini file via Language Manager, but the labels can only be modified one by one resulting in a very long update process when we have sometimes 800 labels coming from the translation agency.

Additionally our current implementation won't allow us to swap files in the server (production server) . We can only upload new templates and modify files within the templates (thanks to the admin template manager interface).

If I add the overrides folder inside the template all I would need to do is override the function __construct inside \libraries\joomla\language\language.php because that's where the path to the overrides is defined.

How could I override that class to change the location of the language overrides? Can you think of a better way of achieving this under the current restrictions?

Answer 1

I think you are overcomplicating this. Just create a template language folder. You can put whatever lang strings you like in there, as they don't have to be used only in your template, and have a file for each language. E.g.

/templates/your-template/language/en-GB/en-GB.tpl_your-template.ini
/templates/your-template/language/de-DE/de-DE.tpl_your-template.ini

Answer 2

You have to load the template language files in the component itself, because Joomla renders the component before the template. Therefore you cannot load an component language override in the template (index.php).

You have to do the following things:

Create:

templates/your_template/language/en-GB/en-GB.com_yourcomponent.ini

Then go to

/components/your_component/yourcomponent.php

Insert before

$controller->execute(JRequest::getCmd('task'));

the following commands:

$language = JFactory::getLanguage();
$language->load('com_yourcomponent' , JPATH_SITE.'/templates/your_template', $language->getTag(), true);

This should work, I have tested this with my custom component some minutes ago.

Untested:

You can use the html/com_yourcomponent/viewname/default.php overrides to load your custom language file I guess. Just put the commands at the top of the file (after _JEXEC).

Maybe this will also work without editing the core component.

Answer 3

As I don't have enought reputation to comment Dennis Heiden answer, therefore I choose to give an answer myself just to state that I've tested the second solution given by Dennis Heiden and it works perfectly. Thank you.

To be clear, the given solution that I'm refferring is the following:

$language = JFactory::getLanguage();
$language->load('com_eventgallery' , JPATH_SITE . '/templates/your_template', $language->getTag(), true);