Translate your Angular 19 (Webpack) website using Intlayer | Internationalization (i18n)

Table of Contents

What is Intlayer?

Intlayer is an innovative, open-source internationalization (i18n) library designed to simplify multilingual support in modern web applications.

With Intlayer, you can:

• Easily manage translations using declarative dictionaries at the component level.
• Dynamically localize metadata, routes, and content.
• Ensure TypeScript support with autogenerated types, improving autocompletion and error detection.
• Benefit from advanced features, like dynamic locale detection and switching.

Step-by-Step Guide to Set Up Intlayer in an Angular Application

See Application Template on GitHub.

Step 1: Install Dependencies

Install the necessary packages using npm:

npm install intlayer angular-intlayernpm install @angular-builders/custom-webpack --save-devnpx intlayer init

• intlayer

  The core package that provides internationalization tools for configuration management, translation, content declaration, transpilation, and CLI commands.

• angular-intlayer The package that integrates Intlayer with Angular application. It provides context providers and hooks for Angular internationalization.

• @angular-builders/custom-webpack Required to customize the Webpack configuration of Angular CLI.

Step 2: Configuration of your project

Create a config file to configure the languages of your application:

import { Locales, type IntlayerConfig } from "intlayer";

const config: IntlayerConfig = {
  internationalization: {
    locales: [
      Locales.ENGLISH,
      Locales.FRENCH,
      Locales.SPANISH,
      // Your other locales
    ],
    defaultLocale: Locales.ENGLISH,
  },
};

export default config;

Through this configuration file, you can set up localized URLs, middleware redirection, cookie names, the location and extension of your content declarations, disable Intlayer logs in the console, and more. For a complete list of available parameters, refer to the configuration documentation.

Step 3: Integrate Intlayer in Your Angular Configuration

To integrate Intlayer with the Angular CLI, you need to use a custom builder. This guide assumes you are using Webpack (default for many Angular projects).

First, modify your angular.json to use the custom Webpack builder. Update the build and serve configurations:

{  "projects": {    "your-app-name": {      "architect": {        "build": {          "builder": "@angular-builders/custom-webpack:browser", // replace "@angular-devkit/build-angular:application",          "options": {            "customWebpackConfig": {              "path": "./webpack.config.ts",              "mergeStrategies": { "module.rules": "prepend" },            },            "main": "src/main.ts", // replace "browser": "src/main.ts",            // ...          },        },        "serve": {          "builder": "@angular-builders/custom-webpack:dev-server", // replace "@angular-devkit/build-angular:dev-server",        },      },    },  },}

Make sure to replace your-app-name with the actual name of your project in angular.json.

Next, create a webpack.config.ts file at the root of your project:

import { mergeConfig } from "angular-intlayer/webpack";export default mergeConfig({});

The mergeConfig function configures Webpack with Intlayer. It injects the IntlayerPlugin (to handle content declaration files) and sets up aliases for optimal performance.

Step 4: Declare Your Content

Create and manage your content declarations to store translations:

Your content declarations can be defined anywhere in your application as soon they are included into the contentDir directory (by default, ./src). And match the content declaration file extension (by default, .content.{json,ts,tsx,js,jsx,mjs,cjs}).

For more details, refer to the content declaration documentation.

Step 5: Utilize Intlayer in Your Code

To utilize Intlayer's internationalization features throughout your Angular application, you need to provide Intlayer in your application configuration.

import { ApplicationConfig } from "@angular/core";import { provideRouter } from "@angular/router";import { provideIntlayer } from "angular-intlayer";import { routes } from "./app.routes";export const appConfig: ApplicationConfig = {  providers: [    provideRouter(routes),    provideIntlayer(), // Add the Intlayer provider here  ],};

Then, you can use the useIntlayer function within any component.

import { Component } from "@angular/core";import { RouterOutlet } from "@angular/router";import { useIntlayer } from "angular-intlayer";@Component({  selector: "app-root",  standalone: true,  imports: [RouterOutlet],  templateUrl: "./app.component.html",  styleUrl: "./app.component.css",})export class AppComponent {  content = useIntlayer("app");}

And in your template:

<div class="content">  <h1>{{ content().title }}</h1>  <p>{{ content().congratulations }}</p></div>

Intlayer content is returned as a Signal, so you access the values by calling the signal: content().title.

(Optional) Step 6: Change the language of your content

To change the language of your content, you can use the setLocale function provided by the useLocale function. This allows you to set the locale of the application and update the content accordingly.

Create a component to switch between languages:

import { Component } from "@angular/core";import { CommonModule } from "@angular/common";import { useLocale } from "angular-intlayer";@Component({  selector: "app-locale-switcher",  standalone: true,  imports: [CommonModule],  template: `    <div class="locale-switcher">      <select        [value]="locale()"        (change)="setLocale($any($event.target).value)"      >        @for (loc of availableLocales; track loc) {          <option [value]="loc">{{ loc }}</option>        }      </select>    </div>  `,})export class LocaleSwitcherComponent {  localeCtx = useLocale();  locale = this.localeCtx.locale;  availableLocales = this.localeCtx.availableLocales;  setLocale = this.localeCtx.setLocale;}

Then, use this component in your app.component.ts:

import { Component } from "@angular/core";import { RouterOutlet } from "@angular/router";import { useIntlayer } from "angular-intlayer";import { LocaleSwitcherComponent } from "./locale-switcher.component";@Component({  selector: "app-root",  standalone: true,  imports: [RouterOutlet, LocaleSwitcherComponent],  templateUrl: "./app.component.html",  styleUrl: "./app.component.css",})export class AppComponent {  content = useIntlayer("app");}

Configure TypeScript

Intlayer uses module augmentation to get benefits of TypeScript and make your codebase stronger.

Ensure your TypeScript configuration includes the autogenerated types.

{  // ... Your existing TypeScript configurations  "include": [    // ... Your existing TypeScript configurations    ".intlayer/**/*.ts", // Include the auto-generated types  ],}

Git Configuration

It is recommended to ignore the files generated by Intlayer. This allows you to avoid committing them to your Git repository.

To do this, you can add the following instructions to your .gitignore file:

# Ignore the files generated by Intlayer.intlayer

VS Code Extension

To improve your development experience with Intlayer, you can install the official Intlayer VS Code Extension.

Install from the VS Code Marketplace

This extension provides:

• Autocompletion for translation keys.
• Real-time error detection for missing translations.
• Inline previews of translated content.
• Quick actions to easily create and update translations.

For more details on how to use the extension, refer to the Intlayer VS Code Extension documentation.

Go Further

To go further, you can implement the visual editor or externalize your content using the CMS.