ActsAsMultilingual
==================

This 'act' makes working with multilingual active record models a little bit easier. 


Example
=======

1. Assuming you have a multilingial model Question:

   > class Question < ActiveRecord::Base
   >
   >   #
   >   # The acts_as_multilingual macro specifies that a question is multilingual, it supports 
   >   # the following options:
   >   #
   >   # 1. :actions ... for any specified action, when the action is done on a question, 
   >   #    the same action will be done on each and every of the corresponding question in 
   >   #    another language, eg. if we archive the english question, archive would also 
   >   #    be done on the chinese question, korean question, etc. 
   >   #
   >   # 2. :foreign_key ... by default, acts_as_multilingual uses 'lang_alias_id' to track
   >   #    questions in the same group, you can override it by setting it to your preferred
   >   #    choice
   >   #
   >   acts_as_multilingual :actions => [ :activate, :archive, :destroy ]
   >
   >   def activate
   >     # do something ... returns false or nil to indicate failure
   >   end
   >
   >   def archive
   >     # do something ... returns false or nil to indicate failure
   >   end
   >
   > end

2. The corresponding migration would be:

   > class CreateQuestions < ActiveRecord::Migration
   >   def self.up
   >     create_table :questions do |t|
   >       t.column :lang_alias_id, :integer  # corresponds to macro's :foreign_key 
   >       t.column :lang, :string            # language for this question
   >       t.column :content, :string
   >     end
   >   end
   >   def self.down
   >     drop_table :questions
   >   end
   > end
       

3. When u want to build a group of questions (each of different language):

   > question = Question.build_lang_aliases [
   >   { :lang => 'en_SG', :content => "How do u do?" },
   >   { :lang => 'zh_CN', :content => "你好吗？" }
   > ]
   > question.save!

   The above returns the 1st question, which is the one in en_SG. An alias of 
   build_lang_aliases is new_lang_aliases.

4. With continuation from 3, to activate, archive or destroy this group of questions, 
   simply do:

   > question.activate
   > question.archive
   > question.destroy

   Where question can be any one within the group.

5. With continuation from 3, to translate the question to the desired language, simply
   do:

   > question.to_lang :zh_CN

6. To determine if any model or model class is multilingual:

   > Question.multilingual?  # true
   > question.multilingual?  # true

   Any active-record model instance/class will support this.
   

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Copyright (c) 2008 NgTzeYang <ngty77[@]gmail.com>, released under the MIT license

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