laravel-translatable

To enable translation support on an Eloquent model, follow these three steps:

1. Add the Spatie\Translatable\HasTranslations trait to your model.
2. Declare which attributes are translatable using either the #[Translatable] PHP attribute or the public $translatable array property.
3. Ensure the corresponding database columns use the json data type. If your database does not support json columns, use text instead.

Using the #[Translatable] attribute

You can use the #[Translatable] attribute on the class. It accepts a variadic list of column names.

Using the $translatable property

Alternatively, you can define a public $translatable array property on the model.

Note: If you use both the attribute and the property, the values will be merged and deduplicated.

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Spatie\Translatable\Attributes\Translatable;
use Spatie\Translatable\HasTranslations;

#[Translatable('name', 'description')]
class NewsItem extends Model
{
    use HasTranslations;
}

By default, when a model is serialized via toArray(), translatable attributes are returned as JSON strings (the raw database format). If you want toArray() to return the translation for the current locale instead of the JSON object, you can create a custom trait that wraps Spatie\Translatable\HasTranslations and overrides the toArray() method.

This approach ensures that whenever the model is converted to an array (e.g., when returning a model from a controller in an API response), the translatable fields are automatically populated with the value for the current application locale.

namespace App\
Traits;
use Spatie\Translatable\HasTranslations as BaseHasTranslations;

trait HasTranslations
{
    use BaseHasTranslations;

    public function toArray()
    {
        $attributes = $this->attributesToArray(); // attributes selected by the query
        // remove attributes if they are not selected
        $translatables = array_filter($this->getTranslatableAttributes(), function ($key) use ($attributes) {
            return array_key_exists($key, $attributes);
        });
        foreach ($translatables as $field) {
            $attributes[$field] = $this->getTranslation($field, \App::getLocale());
        }
        return array_merge($attributes, $this->relationsToArray());
    }
}

You can set translations for a translatable attribute using several methods:

1. Current Locale: Assign a string directly to the attribute. This sets the translation for the application's current locale.
2. Bulk Creation: Pass an associative array of locales and values when calling create().
3. Specific Locale: Use the setTranslation method to target a specific language.
4. Multiple Locales: Assign an associative array to the attribute or use the setTranslations method to update multiple languages at once.

Note: Always call save() on the model to persist changes to the database.

// Set for current locale
$newsItem->name = 'New translation';
$newsItem->save();

// Set during creation
NewsItem::create([
   'name' => [
      'en' => 'Name in English',
      'nl' => 'Naam in het Nederlands'
   ],
]);

// Set for a specific locale
$newsItem->setTranslation('name', 'en', 'English Name');

// Set multiple locales at once
$translations = ['en' => 'hello', 'es' => 'hola'];
$newsItem->setTranslations('name', $translations);
$newsItem->save();