Loading a language

This is the only part of gottext that ships to a browser. It answers one question at startup: which language is this reader in, and where are its catalogues.

startLocale

Call it once, before anything renders:

import { startLocale } from '@gopherium/gottext'

const locale = await startLocale(
  async () => (await fetchLocale()).locale,
  [
    { domain: 'myapp', load: myappCatalog },
    { domain: 'mylib', load: mylibCatalog },
  ],
  { defaultLocale: 'en-US' },
)

Three arguments:

• A resolver. A function answering the language to use. Where it comes from is yours: a server call, a browser setting, a saved choice.
• The domains to load. One entry per text domain. load takes a locale and answers a catalogue, or undefined when the package ships none for that language. Leave domain out for the default domain the WordPress packages read.
• Options. defaultLocale is the language your sources are written in. When the reader is already in it, no catalogue loads.

Every catalogue loads at the same time, not one after another, so three domains cost one wait rather than three. A domain that answers undefined is skipped and its strings stay in English.

startLocale returns the language it settled on, and remembers it.

Dates

formatDate shows a moment in whatever language startLocale settled on:

import { formatDate } from '@gopherium/gottext'

formatDate(post.publishedAt)
formatDate(post.publishedAt, { dateStyle: 'long' })

It takes a Date or the text a server stored, and returns an empty string for an empty input, so a missing date renders as nothing rather than as Invalid Date.

It renders the date only. The options are the Intl.DateTimeFormatOptions that toLocaleDateString accepts: dateStyle and the individual fields work, and timeStyle throws. To show a time, pass the fields you want, such as { hour: 'numeric', minute: 'numeric' }.

displayLocale() answers the settled language if you need it elsewhere. rememberLocale(locale) sets it, which startLocale does for you.