Internationalization with i18next + react-i18n 🌎
#javascript#react#braziliandevs#beginners
Guimo

Guimo @guim0

About: Front-End Dev, following my champion journey.

Location:
São Paulo, Brazil
Joined:
Oct 1, 2020

Internationalization with i18next + react-i18n 🌎

Publish Date: Feb 7 '24
101 10

Hey, this is just a example, on my machine worked!

It's important to know how to deal with multiple kinds of users, and the one of the most important barriers is the language so it's very important that your project has some sort of internationalization.
There are many forms implement Internationalization on you project, but the quickest and easiest i found was with i18next + react-i18n.

How to:

  • Create your project (i use vite): 
npm create vite@latest
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
  • Add i18next + react-i18n to your project 
 npm install react-i18next i18next --save
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
  • Create a folder called lib and create a file called i18n.ts: > should look like this 
import i18n from "i18next";
import { initReactI18next } from "react-i18next";

i18n.use(initReactI18next).init({
  resources: {},
  lng: "en", // the default language you want on your project

});
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
  • Create another folder on src called locale, there you can add your .json files, on this example i created two:
    • en.json for English and pt.json for Portuguese:
    • en.json 
{
    "translation":{
        "header": "Our Header",
        "footer": "Our Footer {{year}}"
    }
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
  • pt.json 
{
    "translation":{
        "header": "Nosso Cabeçalho",
        "footer": "Nosso Rodape {{year}}"
    }
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Now go back on your i18n.ts file:

should look like this

import i18n from "i18next";
import { initReactI18next } from "react-i18next";

//Add the translation files
import enTranslations from "../locale/en.json";
import ptTranslations from "../locale/pt.json";

i18n.use(initReactI18next).init({
  resources: {

    en: { ...enTranslations },

    pt: { ...ptTranslations },

  },
  lng: "en",

});
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Final Steps!

  • Go on your main.tsx file and import the i18n.ts file: 
import "./lib/i18n.ts";
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Now we have to make usage of this, let's go on App.tsx

  • Let's add the useTranslation hook: 
  const {
    t,
    i18n: { changeLanguage, language },
  } = useTranslation();
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
  • Create a useState just switch between the languages:

 const [currentLang, setCurrentLang] = useState(language);

  • Create a simple function to switch the languages: 
  const switchLang = () => {

    const newLang = currentLang === "en" ? "pt" : "en";

    changeLanguage(newLang);

    setCurrentLang(newLang);
  };
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
  • Change your App.tsx so we can test our theory!

Should look like this

 return (

    <>

      <h1>{t("header")}</h1>

      <button type="button" onClick={switchLang}>
        Change Language manually
      </button>

      <footer>
        <h1>{t("footer", { year: new Date().getFullYear() })}</h1>
      </footer>

    </>

  );
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
  • As you can see, to use the translation we have to pass the t from useTranslation with the tokens we created on our .json languages.

Result

On English!
English example

On Portuguese!
Portuguese example

I Hope this could helped you somehow!

How to find me?

Comments 10 total

Add comment