A variant on the acts_as_localized theme for when you have static seed data in your system that must be localised.

1. It's designed for a specific use-case, namely the localisation of your seed data.
2. It works with the standard Rails I18n system and assumes you already have a lot of your localisation data in config/locales/*.yml, or you have your i18n stuff already set up in a database.
3. It's fast and easy.

In your Gemfile

gem 'acts_as_read_only_i18n_localised'

In config/locales/categories.en.yml

en:
  categories:
    fruits:
      name: Great fresh fruit
      description: Our fantastic range of seasonal and local fresh fruit will delight you.
    vegetables:
      name: Farm fresh veggies
      description: Our locally grown and freshly harvested veggies are simply delicious.
    meats:
      name: Farm-fresh seasonal meat
      description: >-
        Loved in life then lightly killed, our meat is locally sourced from small farms
        that meet our demanding standards.

In app/models/category.rb

class Category < ActiveRecord::Base
  include ActsAsReadOnlyI18nLocalised
  validates :slug, format: {with: /\A[a-z]+[-?[a-z]]\z/},
                   uniqueness: true,
                   presence: true
  has_many :products
  validates_associated :products
  
  acts_as_read_only_i18n_localised :name, :description
end

This simply generates appropriate name and description methods along the lines of

def name
  key = "#{self.table_name}.#{slug}.name".downcase.to_sym
  return I18n.t(key)
end

with the effect that a call to category.name will always return the localised name using the standard I18n system.

Depending on how your code is configured, I18n will raise a MissingTranslationData exception if the key does correspond to any data. Exceptions on missing keys is usually turned on in development and test but not on staging or production. See The Rails I18n Guide for more.

Note: acts_as_read_only_i18n_localised will also work with non active-record classes. If there is no self.table_name method it will check to see if the class.name responds to pluralize, and use that if it can, otherwise it will just use the class.name.

Say your categories have their own sub categories. Building on the previous example you might define the following

class Category < ActiveRecord::Base
  include ActsAsReadOnlyI18nLocalised
  validates :slug, format: {with: /\A[a-z]+[-?[a-z]]\z/},
                   uniqueness: true,
                   presence: true
  has_many :products
  validates_associated :products

  has_many :categories, foreign_key: :parent_id
  belongs_to :parent, class_name: 'Category'

  acts_as_read_only_i18n_localised :name, :description
  use_custom_slug :slug_maker

  def slug_maker
    reurn slug if parent.nil?
    "#{@parent.slug}.categories.#{slug}"
  end
end

In db/seeds.rb add something like

require 'i18n'

I18n.t(:categories).each do |key, data|
  Category.create(slug: key)
end

In db/seeds.rb add something like

require 'i18n'

I18n.t(:categories).each do |key, data|
  cat = Category.where(slug: key).first_or_create!
  if data[:categories]
    data[:categories].each do |inner_key, inner_data|
      Category.where(slug: inner_key, parent: cat).first_or_create!
    end
  end
end

Or preferably something recursive, though the above will do if you are only going 1 level deep.

This gem requires Ruby version 2.0.0 or better. It is tested against the following Rubies.

• 2.0.0
• 2.1.6
• 2.2.4
• 2.3.0

Before you do anything do this:

bundle install

gem build acts_as_read_only_i18n_localised.gemspec

rspec

or

rake

You can also run the following QA tools against the codebase if you have them installed.

• rubocop (on its own without any of the codeclimate stuff.)
• codeclimate (which will also run rubocop itself.)

Contributions and ideas are welcome.

If you have ideas on how to improve the codebase or feature-set, please add them as issues so they can be discussed.

For contributing code please see CONTRIBUTING for details on how to do that.