Multilingual Data Sources

In general multilingual data sources work exactly the same way as regular data sources do, but there are a few details you should be aware of when you want to use Multilingual to it’s full capacity.

• Filters
• Content
• XML Output
• The “Multilingual” Data Source

Filters

Filtering by a field that has been configured as multilingual is as easy as filtering by any other field – you only have to include the field in the default language and set up your filter configuration as usual:

![IMAGE "Multilingual Data Sources: Filters"]

Multilingual takes care of filtering your entries in the current language and falls back to the default language for a specific filter, if no translation is provided – meaning it will do all the background magic needed to work flawlessly together with fully translated url-parameters.

Content

When setting up your multilingual data sources you need to make sure to include all (required) language-instances of a field in the data source editor’s “Content”-section.

![IMAGE "Multilingual Data Sources: Included Elements "]

XML Output

The extension removes the language segment from the field name and provides lang- and translated-attributes instead:

<entry>
    <title lang="en" translated="yes" handle="united-kingdom">United Kingdom</title>
    <title lang="de" translated="yes" handle="grossbritannien">Großbritannien</title>
</entry>

In your XSLT, you can now use the $language-parameter to get the translation for the current language:

<xsl:value-of select="title[@lang = $language]"/>

If a translation isn’t provided for a specific language, the extension provides a fallback to the default language in your XML output:

<entry>
    <title lang="en" translated="yes" handle="united-kingdom">United Kingdom</title>
    <title lang="de" translated="no" handle="united-kingdom">United Kingdom</title>
</entry>

You can check if a field has actually been translated or uses fallback content by testing the translated-attribute:

<xsl:if test="title[@lang = $language]/@translated = 'yes'">
    <xsl:value-of select="title[@lang = $language]"/>
</xsl:if>

The “Multilingual” Data Source

Multilingual comes with an own data source named “multilingual” that contains the codes of all supported languages as well as information about the default and the current language:

<multilingual>
    <language handle="en" default="yes" current="yes">en</language>
    <language handle="de">de</language>
</multilingual>

Note: This data source is mainly meant to help building a language switcher. The basic information about the current language will always be provided by the $language-parameter and it’s recommended to rely on that source for all your templating logic.