[Catalyst] Multi-language and REST

[Ian Docherty]

Christopher H. Laco wrote:
> Ian Docherty wrote:
>> I have been pondering how to take an existing Catalyst application 
>> and make it multi-lingual.
>>
>> I would prefer to use a RESTful method, so this would translate 
>> /foo/bar to /en/foo/bar or /fr/foo/bar (for English and French 
>> respectively).
>>
>> The problem as I see it is how to do this. I don't want to move all 
>> my controllers, e.g. MyApp::Controller::Foo::Bar to 
>> MyApp::Controller::Lang::Foo::Bar
>>
>> What other alternatives are there?
>>
>> Regards
>> Ian
>
> Well, I'm sure there's a somewhat elegant way to do this with Chained, 
> but it the other controllers don't use Chained now, that could get fun.
I have considered chained, and would be prepared to re-write the 
existing controllers. A bigger decision would be renaming the 
controllers or moving them.

e.g. existing MyApp::Controller::Foo::Bar maps to URI /foo/bar

To match against /<lang>/foo/bar either I can leave the controller where 
it is (lib/MyApp/Controller/Foo/Bar.pm) or move it 
(lib/MyApp/Controller/Lang/Foo/Bar)

The first approach is less work (only using chained) the second is more 
work, but maps the URI namespace more logically to the Class names.

What would people do if they were writing a Catalyst App from scratch 
with this feature? That would tell me what the 'best practice' is even 
if it means a big re-write exercise.
>
> The brute force way is to inspect the request and rip out the language 
> portion before sending it on to get dispatched...just like the Flavour 
> plugin does with file extensions:
>
> sub prepare_path {}
One of my pet peeves  is exemplified in the 'Flavour' plugin. It is such 
minimal documentation that it neither tells you what it does or why it 
does it. OK, I can look at the code, but it is too much effort unless I 
think I have a good reason to do so. I assume in this case that it is 
something to do with date strings in the URI (for blogging?). I can't be 
ar**d!