strong-globalize-cli

This module provides CLI tooling for globalization.

Supported Node.js versions

Node 10.x latest version and above are supported.

Overview

The CLI ships slt-globalize command to perform common tasks to globalize JavaScript applications. Key features are:

• Extract: parse JavaScript source code to extract text messages that should be globalized.

• Lint: validate message files to check possible issues.

• Translate: Use IBM Globalization Pipeline to translate text messages

Installation

To install the CLI, run npm i -g strong-globalize-cli. After that, you should be able to use slt-globalize command.

Basic use

Usage: slt-globalize [options]

Options:
  -h, --help                      Print this message and exit
  -v, --version                   Print version and exit
  -l, --lint                      Check validity of string resource
  -t, --translate                 Translate string resource
  -d, --deepextract   Deep-extract resource strings
  -e, --extract       Extract resource strings to en/messages.json except for directories on [black list] separated by a space.

Configure access to Globalization Pipeline on IBM Cloud

To access Globalization Pipeline on IBM Cloud for machine translation, credentials should be provided in one of the two ways:

• By /.strong-globalize/ibm-cloud-credentials.json

Copy and paste your credentials look like the following from the dashboard of Globalization Pipeline on IBM Cloud into /.strong-globalize/ibm-cloud-credentials.json.

{
  "credentials": {
    "url": "https://gp-beta-rest.ng.bluemix.net/translate/rest",
    "userId": "6e41ceac9f14b493faxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
    "password": "vLbqlkjPhJiwJlkjwou8woO82hk2huku",
    "instanceId": "6888888888888e6d2f458b1b4b5fd010"
  }
}

• By environment variables

For example,

export BLUEMIX_URL="https://gp-beta-rest.ng.bluemix.net/translate/rest"
export BLUEMIX_USER=6e41ceac9f14b493faxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
export BLUEMIX_PASSWORD=vLbqlkjPhJiwJlkjwou8woO82hk2huku
export BLUEMIX_INSTANCE=6888888888888e6d2f458b1b4b5fd010
slt-globalize -t

Please see Other Resources for step-by-step instructions to set up the service.

Tests

npm run test

String resource extraction

strong-globalize CLI supports string resource auto-extraction in two modes: regular extraction mode and deep extraction mode. The regular extraction mode is invoked with slt-globalize -e and typically used in package development phase. The deep extraction mode slt-globalzie -d is designed to be used in globalization of enterprise-scale applications.

Regular extraction

Suppose you have a package named gmain which has two JS files: index.js and lib/util.js and the two JS files contain the same g.log('user: %s', userName) call in line# 8 and line# 12 respectively. Running slt-globalize -e under the application root directory, /Users/user/gmain will generate intl/en/messages.json and intl/zz/messages.json as shown in the Pseudo Localization Support section. Note that slt-globalize -e extracts all strong-globalized literal strings as well as non-globalized literal string with positional information in to intl/zz/messages.json. It is useful to pin-point untranslated strings in the source code.

In the regular extraction mode, strong-globalize scans all JS and Html templates owned by the gmain package no matter how deep the directory structure goes -- for example, gmain/lib/usa/california/sanfrancisco/util.js is scanned. However, it does not examine dependent files under node_modules or test directory. All strong-globalized literal strings in JS and Html files of the target package will be extracted and stored in intl/en/messages.json along with the positional information stored in intl/zz/messages.json. All non-strong-globalized literal strings in the first argument of all JS function calls are extracted and stored in intl/zz/messages.json along with the positional information.

In runtime, the string resource JSON files under intl will be loaded on to memory as needed.

Use Case: Self-contained CLI utility package is typically code-globalized and distributed with or without translated messages.json. API library packages are typically code-globalized and distributed without translation. Such library packages are then downloaded and used as part of enterprise-scale applications.

/Users/user
          └── gmain
              ├── index.js
              ├── intl
              │   ├── de
              │   ├── en
              │   ├── es
              │   ├── fr
              │   ├── it
              │   ├── ja
              │   ├── ko
              │   ├── pt
              │   ├── ru
              │   ├── zh-Hans
              │   ├── zh-Hant
              │   └── zz
              ├── lib
              │   └── usa
              │       └── california
              │           └── sanfrancisco
              │               └── util.js
              ├── node_modules
              │   ├── express
              │   ├── request
              │   └── strong-globalize -> /usr/local/lib/node_modules/strong-globalize
              └── package.json

Use @strong-globalize comment

Sometimes it's hard for the CLI to determine if a given variable is an instance of StrongGlobalize so that usage of such variables are subject to message extraction.

To explicitly mark a variable as an instance of StrongGlobalize, use @strong-globalize comment:

// @strong-globalize
import g from 'strong-globalize';

// Now the usage of `g.*` is enabled for message extraction
console.log(g.f('English Text'));

To explicitly mark an argument of a function call to be globalized, we can use @globalize or @strong-globalize comment.

const gUtil = require('your-helper-for-strong-globalize');

// @globalize
const msg = gUtil.f('abc');
// @globalize
gUtil.log('abc');

Deep extraction

Enterprise-scale applications may depend on dozens of third party packages directly or indirectly. Such applications typically download dependent packages using npm install and can globalize them using the Deep Extraction mode.

For example, suppose gmain package has one dependent package gsub which is installed under gmain/node_modules as shown in the directory structure diagram below. slt-globalize -d traverses the npm v3 style dependency tree and extracts all the strong-globalized string literals into gmain/intl/en/messages.json. This way, all the literal strings in your package gmain as well as all the dependent modules are extracted and can be translated consistently at gmain/intl level. Note that the package.json dependency traversal is different from simple directory traversal.

Note that string resource extraction from Html templates is supported in the regular extraction mode only.

STRONGLOOP_GLOBALIZE_MAX_DEPTH environment variable

As the size of your application grows, the number of dependent packages can grow exponentially. Since non-globalized literal strings are also recorded on gmain/intl/zz/messages.json, gmain/intl/zz/messages.json may also grow exponentially and cause slt-globalize -d to run out of resource on your computer.

To manage such situations, you can set STRONGLOOP_GLOBALIZE_MAX_DEPTH environment variable. slt-globalize -d stops traversing at the specified directory depth. Note that it works as directory depth although the traversal is controlled by dependencies defined in package.json.

For example, invoking STRONGLOOP_GLOBALIZE_MAX_DEPTH=3 slt-globalize -d under /Users/user/gmain works as follows. gmain/index.js is depth 1; thus examined. gmain/lib/usa/california/sanfrancisco/util.js is depth 5, not examined although it's part of your gmain package. gmain/node_modules/gsub/index.js is level 3, thus examined. Likewise, all the files directly under gmain/node_modules/express and gmain/node_modules/request will also be examined and literal strings are extracted to gmain/intl/zz/messages.json.

npm v3 dependency resolution

npm v3 tries to install all dependent packages in the root node_modules directory, i.e., gmain/node_modules in the above example, which means that most dependent package directories are at depth level 2. Therefore, STRONGLOOP_GLOBALIZE_MAX_DEPTH does not help in npm v3 installed applications. slt-globalize -d [black list] option can help to reduce the number of packages to scan.

/Users/user
          └── gmain
              ├── index.js
              ├── intl
              │   ├── de
              │   ├── en
              │   ├── es
              │   ├── fr
              │   ├── it
              │   ├── ja
              │   ├── ko
              │   ├── pt
              │   ├── ru
              │   ├── zh-Hans
              │   ├── zh-Hant
              │   └── zz
              ├── lib
              │   └── usa
              │       └── california
              │           └── sanfrancisco
              │               └── util.js
              ├── node_modules
              │   ├── express
              │   ├── gsub
              │   │   ├── index.js
              │   │   ├── node_modules
              │   │   │   └── strong-globalize -> /usr/local/lib/node_modules/strong-globalize
              │   │   └── package.json
              │   ├── request
              │   └── strong-globalize -> /usr/local/lib/node_modules/strong-globalize
              └── package.json

HTML Template Globalization

Many UI strings are included in HTML templates. slt-globalize -e supports string extraction from the HTML templates as well as JS files. Once extracted, slt-globalize -t can be used to translate the resource JSON.

In the following example, the two strings {{StrongLoop}} History Board and History board shows the access history to the e-commerce web site. are extracted to JSON.

<div class="board-header section-header">
  <h2>{{{{StrongLoop}} History Board | globalize}}</h2>
</div>
<div role="help-note">
  <p>
    {{ History board shows the access history to the e-commerce web site. | globalize }}
  </p>
</div>

strong-globalize supports {{ | globalize }} out of box. In case you need other pattern matching rule for your template engine, you can set custom RegExp by setHtmlRegex API.

The string extraction works for CDATA as well. Text in cdata is extracted in the following example:

JSON YAML File Globalization

You can directly pass the file name of JSON or YAML file and a list of fields to g.t or g.formatMessage. The file name is a path relative to the root directory of the package. The list of the fields is a string notation of two dimensional array being a list of the values to globalize. In the sample code below, data.json is the JSON file and index.js shows how to globalize all fields of data.json. g.t loads the globalized object into memory which is usually done by require() or fs.readFile followed by JSON.parse. Note that the file name and the list must be provided as string literals directly in g.t call. YAML file globalization works in exactly the same way.

Note that strong-globalize supports traditional message key approach as well. To take the message key approach in JSON file globalization, manually define a message key like msgKey, store the key and content value pair in intl/en/messages.json, then in run-time, load the JSON file as usual (require or readFile & parse) first and overwrite the value with g.t('msgKey').

Plain text file globalization works in the same way except that 1. the text file name is a path relative to intl/en of the package, and 2. since the entire text file is a message, there are no parameters equivalent to the field list.

In the above paragraphs, g.f can be used instead of g.t if you'd like.

test/fixtures/extract007' is the YAML equivalent. Likewise, test/fixtures/formatyaml001is the parallel oftest/fixtures/formatjson001`.

// test/fixtures/extract006/index.js
const SG = require('strong-globalize');
SG.SetRootDir(__dirname);
const g = new SG();

const json = g.t('data/data.json',
  '[' +
  '  "title",' +
  '  ["types", 0],' +
  '  ["types", 1],' +
  '  ["types", 2],' +
  '  ["types", 3],' +
  '  ["threeWrites", "e"],' +
  '  ["threeWrites", "o"],' +
  '  ["threeWrites", "w"]' +
  ']');
console.log(JSON.stringify(json, null, 2));

test/fixtures/extract006/data/data.json

{
    "title": "This is an error.",
    "types": ["error", "log", "info", "warn"],
    "threeWrites" : {
      "e": "ewrite",
      "o": "owrite",
      "w": "write"
    }
}

 test/fixtures/extract006
                        ├── data
                        │   └── data.json
                        ├── index.js
                        ├── intl
                        │   ├── de
                        │   │   └── messages.json
                        │   ├── en
                        │   │   └── messages.json
                        │   ├── es
                        │   │   └── messages.json
                        │   ├── fr
                        │   │   └── messages.json
                        │   ├── it
                        │   │   └── messages.json
                        │   ├── ja
                        │   │   └── messages.json
                        │   ├── ko
                        │   │   └── messages.json
                        │   ├── pt
                        │   │   └── messages.json
                        │   ├── ru
                        │   ├── zh-Hans
                        │   │   └── messages.json
                        │   ├── zh-Hant
                        │   │   └── messages.json
                        │   └── zz
                        │       ├── messages.json
                        │       └── messages_inverted.json
                        ├── node_modules
                        │   └── strong-globalize
                        │       ├── ...
                        │       ...
                        │
                        └── package.json

Other Resources

• https://github.com/Setogit/sg-example-001-date-currency

  A complete strong-globalized application with machine-translated messages. In addition to message formatting, date and currency formatting examples are included. You can install and quickly see how the strong-globalized (or SG'ed in short) app works. Just install and node index.js

• https://github.com/Setogit/sg-example-002-glob-pipeline

  Detailed 15-step instruction with 15 screen-shots to set up IBM Globalization Pipeline on Bluemix

License

Artistic License 2.0