Extension:LanguageSelector

Not to be confused with Extension:UniversalLanguageSelector.

MediaWiki extensions manual

LanguageSelector Release status: beta
Implementation	MyWiki , Tag , Locale
Description	Provides a language selector on every page, also for visitors; automatic detection of visitor's language
Author(s)	Daniel Kinzler Universal Omega
Latest version	1.0.0
MediaWiki	1.35+
Database changes	No
License	GNU General Public License 2.0 or later
Download	Download extension Git [?]: Download Git master browse repository (GitHub) commit history repository contributors (GitHub) code review README
Example	translatewiki.net
Parameters $wgLanguageSelectorDetectLanguage $wgLanguageSelectorLanguages $wgLanguageSelectorLocation
Hooks used BeforePageDisplay GetCacheVaryCookies LocalUserCreated ParserFirstCallInit SkinAfterPortlet SkinTemplateOutputPageBeforeExec UserGetLanguageObject
Quarterly downloads	31 (Ranked 147th)
Translate the LanguageSelector extension if it is available at translatewiki.net
Issues	Open tasks · Report a bug

The LanguageSelector extension provides detection of the interface language to use for anonymous visitors, and a menu for selecting the user language on each page, for logged in users as well as anonymous visitors. It also provides an additional tag, <languageselector>, for embedding the selector into wiki pages and system messages.

Language detection is based on the Accept-Language header sent by the browser as part of the HTTP request. Users can also set their preferred language explicitly - this is handled by a separate cookie for anonymous visitors, and in the user preferences for logged in users.

For more comprehensive support for multilingual content, LanguageSelector can be combined with the Polyglot extension.

language detection and cookie-based language preferences for anonymous users currently does not work with page caching (MediaWiki filecache, reverse HTTP proxies like squid, etc). It may degrade cache performance and render the cache useless, and it may lead to people seeing the page in a random language. Mediawiki's internal caches (parser, link, query, etc) are not affected.

Installing

• Download and place the file(s) in a directory called LanguageSelector in your extensions/ folder.
• Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php :

  wfLoadExtension( 'LanguageSelector' );
  

•  Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.

To users running MediaWiki 1.35 or earlier:

The instructions above describe the new way of installing this extension using wfLoadExtension(). If you need to install this extension on these earlier versions (MediaWiki 1.35 and earlier), instead of wfLoadExtension( 'LanguageSelector' );, you need to use:

require_once "$IP/extensions/LanguageSelector/LanguageSelector.php";

Configuration

You can specify the following settings in your LanguageSelector.php (after including the extension file):

$wgLanguageSelectorLanguages

Languages to be offered to the user for selection. If set to NULL (the default), all languages known to MediaWiki (by $wgExtraLanguageNames ) are considered. If the Polyglot extension is installed and $wgPolyglotLanguages is set, that value will be used as a fallback. Setting $wgLanguageSelectorLanguages to a shorter list may be more convenient for users than selecting from a list with more than a hundred mostly useless entries. This variable must be an array, so you can declare it like this:

$wgLanguageSelectorLanguages = [ 'en', 'es', 'pt' ];

The codes "en", "es" and "pt" stand for English, Spanish and Portuguese respectively.

$wgLanguageSelectorShowCode (since rev:55711)

whether to show language codes before the native language name. Default is false;

$wgLanguageSelectorDetectLanguage

Language detection mode for anonymous visitors. Possible values:

• LANGUAGE_SELECTOR_USE_CONTENT_LANG: do not use detection, always use the wiki's content language (this is mediawiki's normal behavior).
• LANGUAGE_SELECTOR_PREFER_CONTENT_LANG: use the wiki's content language, setting, if accepted by the client.
• LANGUAGE_SELECTOR_PREFER_CLIENT_LANG: use the client's preferred language, if it is in $wgLanguageSelectorLanguages.

$wgLanguageSelectorLocation

where to inject the language selector widget. Note that you will probably have to adjust your CSS styles to adopt the language selector to your wiki's style. Possible values of $wgLanguageSelectorLocation:

• LANGUAGE_SELECTOR_MANUAL: do not show language selector. This can be useful if you only want to use the auto-detection feature, or only want the selector on a few pages, or if you want to place it manually by putting it into an appropriate system message.
• LANGUAGE_SELECTOR_AT_TOP_OF_TEXT: inject a dropdown box at the top of page content. This is the default, but it looks quite ugly without extra CSS rules applied.
• LANGUAGE_SELECTOR_IN_TOOLBOX: inject a dropdown box at the bottom of the toolbox in the sidebar. This only works with the MonoBook skin, or skins explicitly supporting the MonoBookTemplateToolboxEnd hook.
• LANGUAGE_SELECTOR_AS_PORTLET: inject the language selector as a portlet in the sidebar, similar to how interlanguage-links are shown. Works with MonoBook skin, may also work with some SkinTemplate-based skins.
• LANGUAGE_SELECTOR_INTO_SITENOTICE: inject a dropdown box at the end of the sitenotice text. Ugly without additional CSS rules applied. Works with MonoBook skin, may also work with some SkinTemplate-based skins.
• LANGUAGE_SELECTOR_INTO_TITLE: inject a dropdown box at the end of the page title. Ugly without additional CSS rules applied. Works with MonoBook skin, may also work with some SkinTemplate-based skins.
• LANGUAGE_SELECTOR_INTO_SUBTITLE: inject a dropdown box at the end of the subtitle. Ugly without additional CSS rules applied. Works with MonoBook skin, may also work with some SkinTemplate-based skins.
• LANGUAGE_SELECTOR_INTO_CATLINKS: inject a dropdown box at the end of the category box. Ugly without additional CSS rules applied. Works with MonoBook skin, may also work with some SkinTemplate-based skins.

Example:

$wgLanguageSelectorDetectLanguage = LANGUAGE_SELECTOR_USE_CONTENT_LANG;
$wgLanguageSelectorLocation = LANGUAGE_SELECTOR_IN_TOOLBOX;