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2.1.3</h1></td>
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59 <h1>Language Class
</h1>
61 <p>The Language Class provides functions to retrieve language files and lines of text for purposes of internationalization.
</p>
63 <p>In your CodeIgniter system folder you'll find one called
<dfn>language
</dfn> containing sets of language files. You can create
64 your own language files as needed in order to display error and other messages in other languages.
</p>
66 <p>Language files are typically stored in your
<dfn>system/language
</dfn> directory. Alternately you can create a folder called
<kbd>language
</kbd> inside
67 your
<kbd>application
</kbd> folder and store them there. CodeIgniter will look first in your
<dfn>application/language
</dfn>
68 directory. If the directory does not exist or the specified language is not located there CI will instead look in your global
69 <dfn>system/language
</dfn> folder.
</p>
71 <p class=
"important"><strong>Note:
</strong> Each language should be stored in its own folder. For example, the English files are located at:
72 <dfn>system/language/english
</dfn></p>
76 <h2>Creating Language Files
</h2>
78 <p>Language files must be named with
<kbd>_lang.php
</kbd> as the file extension. For example, let's say you want to create a file
79 containing error messages. You might name it:
<kbd>error_lang.php
</kbd></p>
81 <p>Within the file you will assign each line of text to an array called
<var>$lang
</var> with this prototype:
</p>
83 <code>$lang['language_key'] = "The actual message to be shown";
</code>
85 <p><strong>Note:
</strong> It's a good practice to use a common prefix for all messages in a given file to avoid collisions with
86 similarly named items in other files. For example, if you are creating error messages you might prefix them with
<var>error_
</var></p>
88 <code>$lang['
<var>error
</var>_email_missing'] = "You must submit an email address";
<br />
89 $lang['
<var>error
</var>_url_missing'] = "You must submit a URL";
<br />
90 $lang['
<var>error
</var>_username_missing'] = "You must submit a username";
</code>
93 <h2>Loading A Language File
</h2>
95 <p>In order to fetch a line from a particular file you must load the file first. Loading a language file is done with the following code:
</p>
97 <code>$this-
>lang-
>load('
<samp>filename
</samp>', '
<dfn>language
</dfn>');
</code>
99 <p>Where
<samp>filename
</samp> is the name of the file you wish to load (without the file extension), and
<dfn>language
</dfn>
100 is the language set containing it (ie, english). If the second parameter is missing, the default language set in your
101 <kbd>application/config/config.php
</kbd> file will be used.
</p>
104 <h2>Fetching a Line of Text
</h2>
106 <p>Once your desired language file is loaded you can access any line of text using this function:
</p>
108 <code>$this-
>lang-
>line('
<samp>language_key
</samp>');
</code>
110 <p>Where
<samp>language_key
</samp> is the array key corresponding to the line you wish to show.
</p>
112 <p>Note: This function simply returns the line. It does not echo it for you.
</p>
114 <h3>Using language lines as form labels
</h3>
116 <p class=
"important">This feature has been deprecated from the language library and moved to the
<kbd>lang()
</kbd> function of the
<a href=
"../helpers/language_helper.html">Language helper
</a>.
</p>
118 <h2>Auto-loading Languages
</h2>
119 <p>If you find that you need a particular language globally throughout your application, you can tell CodeIgniter to
<a href=
"../general/autoloader.html">auto-load
</a> it during system initialization. This is done by opening the application/config/autoload.php file and adding the language(s) to the autoload array.
</p>
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