How can I make the user switch languages in Laravel 5? - laravel-5

Question

I have created a bilingual laravel 5 application that contains two locales, en and ar.
What I want is for the site visitor to be able to change the language of the website by clicking on a link labeled with the language name.

Answer 1

Option 1:
Store user language in database, I have mine in users table. This is to avoid asking user each time they login to your application.
You can set 'en' as default. However if user is a guest we store locale in session.
So your migration might look like this:
<?php
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
class CreateUsersTable extends Migration {
/**
* Run the migrations.
* #return void
*/
public function up()
{
Schema::create('users', function(Blueprint $table)
{
$table->increments('id');
$table->string('email')->unique();
$table->string('password', 60);
$table->string('locale', 5)->default('en');
$table->rememberToken();
$table->timestamps();
});
}
/**
* Reverse the migrations.
*
* #return void
*/
public function down()
{
Schema::drop('users');
}
}
When user or guest clicks on a certain language link then update user locale in database or store guest choice in a session
Example :
For authenticated user or guest in your controller
public function setLocale($locale){
if(Auth::check()){
$user = User::find(Auth::user()->id);
$user->update(['locale'=>$locale]);
}else{
Session::put('locale',$locale);
}
}
We need to find a way of setting locale on each request because Laravel does not store locale set with App::setLocale() hence we are going to use a Middleware to setLocale on each request.
To understand how Laravel handles App::setLocale() here is the method in Illuminate\Foundation\Application.php that handles setting of locale
public function setLocale($locale)
{
$this['config']->set('app.locale', $locale);
$this['translator']->setLocale($locale);
$this['events']->fire('locale.changed', array($locale));
}
This method calls another method in Translator.php show below:
/**
* Set the default locale.
*
* #param string $locale
* #return void
*/
public function setLocale($locale)
{
$this->locale = $locale;
}
As you can see nothing like caching or session is used to remember locale so we must set it on each request. So lets create a Middleware for it. I will call it LocaleMiddleware.
<?php namespace App\Http\Middleware;
use Closure, Session, Auth;
class LocaleMiddleware {
public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
if(Auth::user()){
app()->setLocale(Auth::user()->locale);
}elseif($locale = Session::has('locale')){
app()->setLocale($locale);
}
return $next($request);
}
}
Lets set the middleware to run on each request by adding it to $middleware stack in App\Http\Kernel.php
protected $middleware = [
'Illuminate\Foundation\Http\Middleware\CheckForMaintenanceMode',
'Illuminate\Cookie\Middleware\EncryptCookies',
'Illuminate\Cookie\Middleware\AddQueuedCookiesToResponse',
'Illuminate\Session\Middleware\StartSession',
'Illuminate\View\Middleware\ShareErrorsFromSession',
'App\Http\Middleware\VerifyCsrfToken',
'App\Http\Middleware\LocaleMiddleware'
];