Basic usage

Current translation

Current translation is a hybrid property in parent object that returns the associated translation object for current locale.:

article = Article()
article.current_translation.name = 'Some article'

You can also directly set the current translation:

article.current_translation = ArticleTranslation(name='Some article')

Articles and translations can be efficiently fetched using various SQLAlchemy loading strategies:

session.query(Article).options(joinedload(Article.current_translation))

Fallback translation

If there is no translation available for the current locale then fallback locale is being used. Fallback translation is a convenient hybrid property for accessing this translation object.:

article = Article()
article.translations.en.name = 'Some article'

article.fallback_translation.name  # Some article

Fallback translation is especially handy in situations where you don’t necessarily have all the objects translated in various languages but need to fetch them efficiently.

query = (
    session.query(Article)
    .options(joinedload(Article.current_translation))
    .options(joinedload(Article.fallback_translation))
)

Translatable columns as hybrids

For each translatable column SQLAlchemy-i18n creates a hybrid property in the parent class. These hybrid properties always point at the current translation.

Example:

article = Article()
article.name = u'Some article'

article.translations['en'].name  # u'Some article'

If the there is no translation available for current locale then these hybrids return the translation for fallback locale. Let’s assume the current locale here is ‘fi’:

article = Article()
article.translations.fi.name = ''
article.translations.en.name = 'Some article'

article.name  # 'Some article'

Accessing translations

Dictionary based access:

article.translations['en'].name = u'Some article'

Attribute access:

article.translations.en.name = u'Some article'
article.translations.fi.name = u'Joku artikkeli'