Yii2 Internationalization (i18n) for advanced template

We are working on a project that makes use of Yii2 advanced template. This project needs to support Internationalization (i18n).

In each of our application, we have a translation configuration. This is needed to generate the translation. The files would be generated in backend/messages, common/messages or frontend/messages.

Here’s a sample.

<?php
// backend/config/i18n.php
// common/config/i18n.php
// frontend/config/i18n.php

return [
    'sourcePath' => __DIR__ . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . '..',
    'languages' => [
        'zh-CN',
    ],
    'translator' => 'Yii::t',
    'sort' => true,
    'removeUnused' => true,
    'markUnused' => true,
    'only' => ['*.php'],
    'except' => [
        '.svn',
        '.git',
        '.gitignore',
        '.gitkeep',
        '.hgignore',
        '.hgkeep',
        '/assets',
        '/command',
        '/config',
        '/mail',
        '/messages',
        '/modules',
        '/runtime',
        '/tests',
        '/vagrant',
        '/vendor',
        '/views/user/settings',
        '/web',
        '/widgets',
    ],
    'format' => 'php',
    'messagePath' => __DIR__ . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . '..' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'messages',
    'overwrite' => true,
];

Here are some samples of how the text should be wrapped.

// You'll use this in common
Yii::t('app', 'Hello world!');

// You'll use this in backend
Yii::t('backend', 'Hello world!');

// You'll use this in frontend
Yii::t('frontend', 'Hello world!');

Here’s how we configured our application to work with the translation.

// common/config/main.php

'components' => [
    // ...
    'i18n' => [
        'translations' => [
            'app*' => [
                'class' => 'yii\i18n\PhpMessageSource',
                'basePath' => '@common/messages',
                'sourceLanguage' => 'en-US',
            ],
            'backend*' => [
                'class' => 'yii\i18n\PhpMessageSource',
                'basePath' => '@backend/messages',
                'sourceLanguage' => 'en-US',
            ],
            'frontend*' => [
                'class' => 'yii\i18n\PhpMessageSource',
                'basePath' => '@frontend/messages',
                'sourceLanguage' => 'en-US',
            ],
        ],
    ],
    // ...
],