This plugin uses a shadow table for translated content, instead of the core's more flexible (but also potentially quite inefficient) EAV-style translate behavior. The shadow translate behavior is designed to have the same API as the core's translate behavior making it a drop-in replacement in terms of usage.

First install the plugin for your app using composer:

php composer.phar require ad7six/shadow-translate:dev-master

Load the plugin by adding following statement to your app's config/bootstrap.php:

Plugin::load('ShadowTranslate');

The shadow translate behavior expects each table to have its own translation table. Taking the blog tutorial as a start point, the following table would already exist:

CREATE TABLE posts (
	id INT UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
	title VARCHAR(50),
	body TEXT,
	created DATETIME DEFAULT NULL,
	modified DATETIME DEFAULT NULL
);

To prepare for using the shadow translate behavior, the following table would be created:

CREATE TABLE posts_translations (
	id INT UNSIGNED,
	locale VARCHAR(5),
	title VARCHAR(50),
	body TEXT,
	PRIMARY KEY (id, locale)
);

Note that the id is the same type as the posts table - but the primary key is a compound key using both id and locale.

Usage is very similar to the core's behavior so e.g.:

class PostsTable extends Table {

	public function initialize(array $config) {
		$this->addBehavior('ShadowTranslate.ShadowTranslate');
	}
}

You can specify the fields in the translation table - but if you don't they are derived from the translation table schema. From this point forward, see the documentation for the core translate behavior, the shadow translate behavior should act the same, and if it doesn't, well, see below.

The initial release is only the behavior, it is planned for the future to add:

• A shell to create shadow tables (migration based)
• A shell to import from the core's i18n table
• A shell to export to the core's i18n table

Most likely!

If you happen to stumble upon a bug, please feel free to create a pull request with a fix (optionally with a test), and a description of the bug and how it was resolved.

You can also create an issue with a description to raise awareness of the bug.

If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can find help on IRC in the #FriendsOfCake channel.