CakePHP 3.x - Getting database fields depending on Locale settings - cakephp

Question

I got to develop a multi language website. It has more that 4 languages at the same time used in database. It's always following scheme:
field_%lang%
ex. id | title_en | title_de | description_en | description_de
As its quite simple I was thinking to write a function I could use in both controllers and views (global Entity?) in order to keep my code DRY.
//function
public function __($field, $language = null){
if( $language === null ){
list( $language ) = split('_', I18n::Locale());
}
$newField = $field . '_' . strtolower( $language );
if( $this->has( $newField ) ){
return $this->{ $newField };
}else{
throw new NotFoundException('Could not find "' . $newField . '" field');
}
}
//usage
$result->__('title'); //returns title_en depending on Locale
$result->__('title', 'de'); //always returns title_de
The thing is that I have no idea where to implement it without braking conventions. I was thinking about Entities but as I understand there is no "global" Entity that works for all models?
All ideas and suggestions are welcome!
Mike

Answer 1

\Cake\ORM\Entity is the base class of all your entities, you are not going to modify a built-in CakePHP class but nothing prevent you from creating your own superclass.
Let's call it AppEntity, just create a AppEntity.php file under src/Model/Entity and put your code inside:
<?php
namespace App\Model\Entity;
use Cake\I18n\I18n;
use Cake\Network\Exception\NotFoundException;
class AppEntity extends \Cake\ORM\Entity {
public function __($field, $language = null){
if( $language === null ){
list( $language ) = split('_', I18n::Locale());
}
$newField = $field . '_' . strtolower( $language );
if( $this->has( $newField ) ){
return $this->{ $newField };
}else{
throw new NotFoundException('Could not find "' . $newField . '" field');
}
}
}
Then, when you create an entity class, instead of extending \Cake\ORM\Entity you extend AppEntity:
<?php
namespace App\Model\Entity;
class User extends AppEntity {
} ;
?>