managing-g11n-as-csv.md

Managing g11n as CSV

Although working with JSON is fine for most people, you may wish to manage your g11n as CSV. This has the following benefits:

• You can see different locales side-by-side
• You could send the CSV to a client to enter their copy without them needing to grok JSON

Therefore, we have provided two Gulp tasks to do this: export and import. You must keep all your json g11n files in the same directory, and our tasks will take care of converting them to and from JSON.

Exporting to CSV

Custom input directory

By default we're looking for translations files in './docs/sample/app/catalogs'. You can tell it where to look:

node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js export --inputDirectory=/var/www/my-app/app/js/catalogs

Custom language list

By default, it looks for en only.

node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js export --langs=en,izzle

Custom output file

By default, export will create g11n.csv. You can customise this:

node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js export  --outfile=/home/buddy/my-translations.csv

Custom canonical language

You have to set one language as canonical - that is, the reference language. By default, this is 'en', but you can change it:

node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js export  --canonical=es

Importing back from the CSV

Once your CSV has been updated, you can import it back in to overwrite your JSON.

node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js import

Customising languages

node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js import --langs=en,izzle

Customising the input file

By default, it will import from g11n.csv, but if you've called the file something else, you can use that instead:

node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js import --infile=foo.csv

Customising the output directory

By default, it will write to

node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js import --catalogDirectory=docs