Enable automatic translations with Mako

I recently discovered the new framework Pyramid. This blog will be used to share code snippets that I find interesting.

First up: Automatic translations with the Mako template engine. (thanks to the people in #pylons@freenode for helping me)

__init__.py:
Add this above main():

from pyramid.events import BeforeRender
from MyProject import helpers
def add_renderer_globals(event):
    event['_'] = helpers._

In main(), add this:

config.add_subscriber(add_renderer_globals, BeforeRender)

helpers.py
Add helpers.py in the same directory as your __init__.py

from pyramid.i18n import TranslationStringFactory
from pyramid.i18n import get_localizer

# Translation:
tsf = TranslationStringFactory('MyProject')
def _(string, request):
    localizer = get_localizer(request)
    translated = localizer.translate(tsf(string))
    return translated

In your Mako template:
Now you can use ${_(‘I want to translate this’, request)} to automatically translate what’s in _(‘here’, request). I didn’t find out how to eliminate the request, so if you know, please leave a comment.

Of course you will also need to run python setup.py extract_messages, init_catalog etc. and change the default locale (default_locale_name = something) in development.ini, for this to work.

As I said, I’m new to Pyramid, so I’m not sure if this is the best way of achieving automatic translations, but it works. Comments are appreciated!