I am researching options for integrating language translation into a web app. I am comparing Google Translations API and React i18n right now, and it seems like i18n requires you to manually add all translations yourself - as in getting ahold of the translation for every page and adding that into the json data for the translation file.
I am just looking for confirmation that that is the way i18n works, and that I am not misunderstanding anything.
I was actually able to answer my own question. In case anyone else has the same question, the answer is yes: it does require manual translation for the entire site.
Related
The app
The application was made using ReactJS, React Router Dom, Styled Components and Redux ducks.
The backend we consume is also made by us using Amazon Amplify and GraphQL.
The goal
We need to define the meta tags of one of the application pages so that it is possible to share personalized links to users
in social networks using OpenGraphic meta tags and the like.
The problem
The project was made in ReactJS and ReactJS has only one HTML page as root (/public/index.html), in this way, everything is generated with Javascript in a root tag, and when it arrives in the browser it is transpiled, as we already know. The problem is that the crawlers responsible for understanding the meta tags are not able to understand Javascript and end up not finding the dynamic data that I am defining on the page that I need to share the link on. They understand that there is one html file and only.
Attempts to resolve the issue
1) Define the meta tags in the /public/index.html file itself
This solution doesn't work because the data we are using is dynamic and the index.html file is a static file
2) Using react-helmet
The solution allows meta tags to be defined, but as already mentioned, crawlers don't understand JS. So, despite being on the page, the meta tags do not appear when sharing the link.
3) Using some SSR technology
This is a possible solution, but we were unable to integrate any SSR Framework into React. And it is not feasible to change the base technology of the project. We can't just switch from React to Next, for example, as the project is already complete.
4) Using a small server made with express.js along with the React application to replace the meta tags in index.html with string.replace() simulating something like an SSR
This solution works, but it causes two requests to be made every time the page is accessed, once by express.js and once on the front-end side by React. Due to the number of requests increasing, this solution was discarded. But if necessary, you can do it. In this case it is also necessary to check if Amplify can keep the application and the small server running in the same project.
5) Using react-snap with react-helmet
React-snap allows you to create html snapshots of the pages of a React project based on their routes and links, this added to react-helmet generates a perfect solution for links to be treated well by web crawlers when they are shared. But the solution doesn't work with dynamic routes. For example, /your-route/:id is a dynamic route that expects an id to be fully defined. React-snap gets lost when trying to create a snapshot of a route that only exists when the id is set. Unfortunately, this solution doesn't work.
These were the solutions we used to try to solve the problem, but it was not possible yet. Probably attempt 4 would be the most ideal to solve the problem. But we are looking for the best way that will not generate reworks and future problems. If someone knows a better way to do that, would help us a lot!
I ran into a problem that I have never faced before developing a PWA with translations.
I state that I have always and only developed multilingual applications in Vue, React, Angular, and at the moment I am using Svelte.
I have always used simple practices, translation with a json dictionary and sending the Lang variable to the server for data acquisition in the requested language (set in the Headers).
All of this was fine until I encountered the need to receive the translated meta tags for the requested content immediately, during SSR, upon landing on the page. But as you know, at this stage there is no access to localStorage or similar, which is why it is impossible for me to acquire the meta tags in the requested language, since I do not have access to the variable set in the browser. How do you act in this case? I'm not interested in finding a specific solution for a certain framework, but a possible technique.
For Svelte I found this half solution, which allows me to obtain the slug / lang / from the address and use it in the server during the rendering phase, in order to obtain the data already translated on the server side.
Can I consider this a good solution?
I don't know what are you returning from the API, but if you have localized user defined content on backend, then this solution is good. If you are translating the app itself, you maybe you can give Tolgee a try, which supports SSR. https://tolgee.io/integrations/svelte
How is it possible to load external templates from the server during runtime with react-templates (or other reacte template system)?
I can't find any doc's about it but noticed that some people mentioned it as answer in SO questions.
Or should I just implement it my self and use the function "dangerouslysetinnerhtml" to inject the html?
What I want to do?:
Store html/css snippets in xml (or json), that is produced/managed by a CMS and load these in a react app. It makes it very easy to change the html, or support different languages without changing the code and making a new deployment.
I have an app running that is doing exactly that, that I have made with Google GWT, and I want to do the same in the react app.
Pardon my English, it is a second language. The whole point of an isomorphic app, as opposed to a regular client-side SPA is so the client doesn't have to download the whole JS file initially which results in really slow initial load time.
I've been trying to teach myself server-side rendered React, and after watching countless videos around the concept and following countless tutorials on the actual implementation, I still can't get my head around this (at least this is how I understand it):
Despite the server conditionally rendering pages and sending props to the client on url change, the client side still uses a router that includes all the entry points for the app (by requiring all of them, and then loading the file based on the url location). Doesn't that means all the files are included in the main client JS file anyways since it's already been required by the client-side router? Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of server-rendered React? Or am I thinking about this the wrong way?
In short, how does an isomorphic React app really works with a client-side router that includes (by requiring them) all of the app's entry points?
I'm not sure that "The whole point of an isomorphic app [...] is so the client doesn't have to download the whole JS file initially which results in really slow initial load time" is necessarily true. I think the primary reason people do this is for SEO reasons and to improve perceived load time. You still get the benefit of showing the users the page before they have to load all the JavaScript (e.g. yes, they have to load all the JS, but it's OK because they already have most/all of the content). The app upgrades to an SPA transparently, providing a seamless experience for the user.
That said, you can implement a system where you don't have to load all the JS at once with something like webpack's code splitting. There's even a simple React Router example that does this.
I am using Google app engine and python to build an application. I am incredibly new to python as well as GAE. I have a index.html file with the basic template for my site. However I would like to replace the contents of a few tags depending on the URL. For example update the title tag for each individual pages. From what I can tell the recommended way to do this is using the lxml library.
And so... Tonight is my first time I have ever worked with lxml and I am having a really hard time wrapping my head around it. I have been fooling around with several permutations of the basic syntax and have not had much success understanding how it works. I have looked for different tutorials and the documentation is few and far between.
When I try the following code I get a 'lxml.etree._ElementTree' object has no attribute 'find_class' error, however the documentation here: http://lxml.de/lxmlhtml.html#parsing-html it sure looks like it should have that class
Am I on the right path? Is this the most efficient/best way to replace the content of html tags?
import os
import webapp2
import lxml.html
doc = lxml.html.parse('index.html')
doc.find_class("title") == 'About Page'
self.response.write(lxml.html.tostring(doc))
This is definitely not the way to that on Google App Engine. You should use some kind of template framework like Jinja2 or Django to achieve your goal.
But before all that you will have to make sure that you completed the Getting Started Tutorial, where you can see these things in action.