Symfony 4 translate Entity fields

Question

I have been developing multilanguage website based on Symfony4. Structure of one of the tables:

Field	Type	Null	Key	Default	Extra
id	int(11)	NO	PRI	NULL	auto_increment
title_en	varchar(255)	NO	NULL
title_fr	varchar(255)	NO	NULL
title_de	varchar(255)	NO	NULL
parent_id	int(11)	NO	NULL

What is the optimal way to select appropriate column in template depending on user locale?

How bad will look the approach below to get needed entity field?

<?php
namespace App\Entity;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
/**
 * Category
 *
 * @ORM\Table(name="category")
 * @ORM\Entity
 */
class Category
{
 /**
 * @var int
 *
 * @ORM\Column(name="id", type="integer", nullable=false)
 * @ORM\Id
 * @ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="IDENTITY")
 */
 private $id;
 /**
 * @var string
 *
 * @ORM\Column(name="title_en", type="string", length=255, nullable=false)
 */
 private $titleEn;
 /**
 * @var string
 *
 * @ORM\Column(name="title_fr", type="string", length=255, nullable=false)
 */
 private $titleFr;
 /**
 * @var string
 *
 * @ORM\Column(name="title_de", type="string", length=255, nullable=false)
 */
 private $titleDe;
 /**
 * @var int
 *
 * @ORM\Column(name="parent_id", type="integer", nullable=false)
 */
 private $parentId = '0';
 
 public function getId(): ?int
 {
 return $this->id;
 }
 public function getLocalizedTitle(): ?string
 {
 $locale='title'.ucfirst($GLOBALS['request']->getLocale());
 return $this->{$locale};
 }
 public function getTitleEn(): ?string
 {
 return $this->titleEn;
 }
 public function setTitleEn(string $titleEn): self
 {
 $this->titleEn = $titleEn;
 return $this;
 }
 public function getTitleDe(): ?string
 {
 return $this->titleDe;
 }
 public function setTitleDe(string $titleDe): self
 {
 $this->titleDe = $titleDe;
 return $this;
 }
 public function getParentId(): ?int
 {
 return $this->parentId;
 }
 public function setParentId(int $parentId): self
 {
 $this->parentId = $parentId;
 return $this;
 }
 
}

Then in view to get field we just use

{{ job.category.getLocalizedTitle }}

• Yrtymd: This code already works and suggests improvements based on better performance and readability
• Mathieu Guindon: I think this isn't a sustainable approach that will scale well. Consider keying your resources with an ID and a language code instead; that way adding support for a new language doesn't require schema + code changes, just the new data.
• Mast: @MathieuGuindon Something like a single JSON per language?
• Sᴀᴍ Onᴇᴌᴀ: @MathieuGuindon are you willing to turn your comment into an answer? As you likely are aware: short answers are okay
• Mathieu Guindon: @SᴀᴍOnᴇᴌᴀ done!

Answer 1

I think this isn't a sustainable approach that will scale well. Consider keying your resources with an ID and a language code instead; that way adding support for a new language doesn't require schema + code changes, just the new data.

In other words you would have an instance of this entity per supported language, a property that can identify the language it's for, and only one title property, without any language code suffix.