I18nAlchemy¶ ↑

I18n date/number parsing/localization

I18nAlchemy aims to handle date, time and number parsing, based on current I18n locale format. The main idea is to have ORMs, such as ActiveRecord for now, to automatically accept dates/numbers given in the current locale format, and return these values localized as well.

Why¶ ↑

Almost all projects I’ve been working so far required some sort of input using dates and numbers, and it has always been a pain due to lack of this support in ActiveRecord itself. As I do most of my projects using different date/number formats than the English defaults (I live in Brazil), we’ve been adopting different ways to handle that in each application.

I’ve already used the delocalize gem in some of these projects, and validates_timeliness parser in others, and both work pretty well actually. But I think it might work a bit different than delocalize, and mainly, I wanted to learn more about I18n and ActiveRecord internals.

Compatibility: Important!¶ ↑

Right now I18nAlchemy only works with Ruby 1.9. Compatibility with Ruby 1.8.7 is planned on our TODO, meanwhile you are free to help us getting it up and running.

Usage¶ ↑

I18nAlchemy is pretty straigthforward to use, you just need to include it in your ActiveRecord model. Lets say we are working with a Product model:

class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
  include I18n::Alchemy
end

By mixing the module into your model, you get the localized method:

@product   = Product.first
@localized = @product.localized

Here are some examples on how to use it with numeric values:

@localized.price = "1.99"

@product.price   # => 1.99
@localized.price # => "1.99"

I18n.with_locale :pt do
  @localized.price = "1,88"

  @product.price   # => 1.88
  @localized.price # => "1,88"
end

And the same goes with date / time objects:

@localized.released_at = "12/31/2011"

@product.released_at   # => Date.new(2011, 12, 31)
@localized.released_at # => "12/31/2011"

I18n.with_locale :pt do
  @localized.released_at = "31/12/2011"

  @product.released_at   # => Date.new(2011, 12, 31)
  @localized.released_at # => "31/12/2011"
end

By default, it will make all numeric, date and time columns available for localization. If you want to select just some attributes to be localized, you can give the list to the localized call:

# This will not localize released_at and other attributes, only price.
@localized = @product.localized(:price)

I18n configuration¶ ↑

Right now the lib uses the same configuration for numeric, date and time values from Rails:

en:

  date:
    formats:
      default: "%m/%d/%Y"

  time:
    formats:
      default: "%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S"

  number:
    format:
      separator: '.'
      delimiter: ','

Please notice the default date and time format is considered for input values for now, and it will only accept valid values matching these formats. We plan to add specific formats and to parse a list of possible input formats for I18nAlchemy, to make it more flexible, please refer to TODO file for more info.

Contact¶ ↑

Carlos Antonio da Silva (github.com/carlosantoniodasilva)

License¶ ↑

MIT License.