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i18next is a popular internationalization library that makes it easy to translate web applications into multiple languages. It’s a great choice for React and Next.js developers looking to support users around the world. In this article, we’ll explore how i18next integrates easily with React and Next.js applications.
First, let’s start with a brief overview of i18next. It’s a JavaScript library that provides a simple API for loading and managing translations. You can use it with a variety of front-end frameworks, including React and Next.js. i18next supports many features out of the box, such as pluralization, context, and interpolation. It also supports loading translations from various sources, including JSON files and backend APIs.
To integrate i18next into your React or Next.js application, you’ll need to install it first. You can do this with npm or yarn by running the following command:
npm install i18next
or
yarn add i18next
Once you’ve installed i18next, you can start using it in your application. One of the easiest ways to use i18next with React is to use the useTranslation hook. This hook provides a convenient way to load translations and translate text within your components.
Here’s an example of how to use the useTranslation hook in a React component:
import React from 'react';
import { useTranslation } from 'react-i18next';
function MyComponent() {
const { t } = useTranslation();
return (
<div>
<h1>{t('title')}</h1>
<p>{t('description')}</p>
</div>
);
}
export default MyComponent;
In this example, we’re importing the useTranslation hook from the react-i18next package. We’re then using it to load translations and get a translation function (t) that we can use to translate text within the component.
We can then use the t function to translate the title and description strings from our translation files. The translation files can be JSON files, like this:
{
"en": {
"title": "Welcome to my app!",
"description": "This is my app description."
},
"fr": {
"title": "Bienvenue dans mon application !",
"description": "Ceci est la description de mon application."
}
}
FluentC can build multiple languages automatically using the i18next FluentC plugin.
In this example, we have two translations: one for English and one for French. We can load these translations into our application using the i18next library.
To load translations, we can use the i18next object and its init function. Here’s an example:
import i18next from 'i18next';
import translationEN from './locales/en.json';
import translationFR from './locales/fr.json';
i18next.init({
interpolation: { escapeValue: false },
lng: 'en',
resources: {
en: {
translation: translationEN
},
fr: {
translation: translationFR
},
},
});
In this example, we’re importing the English and French translations from JSON files. We’re then initializing i18next with these translations and setting the default language to English. We’re also configuring the interpolation settings so that we can use variables in our translations.
Once you’ve loaded your translations and set up i18next, you can start using the useTranslation hook to translate text within your components.
In a Next.js application, you can use the same approach to integrate i18next. You can load translations in the getStaticProps or getServer
