Detect Browser Language in PHP

user_379008 0
Viewed 289187

I use the following PHP script as index for my website.

This script should include a specific page depending on the browser's language (automatically detected).

This script does not work well with all browsers, so it always includes index_en.php for any detected language (the cause of the problem is most probably an issue with some Accept-Language header not being considered).

Could you please suggest me a more robust solution?

<?php
// Open session var
session_start();
// views: 1 = first visit; >1 = second visit

// Detect language from user agent browser
function lixlpixel_get_env_var($Var)
{
     if(empty($GLOBALS[$Var]))
     {
         $GLOBALS[$Var]=(!empty($GLOBALS['_SERVER'][$Var]))?
         $GLOBALS['_SERVER'][$Var] : (!empty($GLOBALS['HTTP_SERVER_VARS'][$Var])) ? $GLOBALS['HTTP_SERVER_VARS'][$Var]:'';
     }
}

function lixlpixel_detect_lang()
{
     // Detect HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE & HTTP_USER_AGENT.
     lixlpixel_get_env_var('HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE');
     lixlpixel_get_env_var('HTTP_USER_AGENT');

     $_AL=strtolower($GLOBALS['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE']);
     $_UA=strtolower($GLOBALS['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);

     // Try to detect Primary language if several languages are accepted.
     foreach($GLOBALS['_LANG'] as $K)
     {
         if(strpos($_AL, $K)===0)
         return $K;
     }

     // Try to detect any language if not yet detected.
     foreach($GLOBALS['_LANG'] as $K)
     {
         if(strpos($_AL, $K)!==false)
         return $K;
     }
     foreach($GLOBALS['_LANG'] as $K)
     {
         //if(preg_match("/[[( ]{$K}[;,_-)]/",$_UA)) // matching other letters (create an error for seo spyder)
         return $K;
     }

     // Return default language if language is not yet detected.
     return $GLOBALS['_DLANG'];
}

// Define default language.
$GLOBALS['_DLANG']='en';

// Define all available languages.
// WARNING: uncomment all available languages

$GLOBALS['_LANG'] = array(
'af', // afrikaans.
'ar', // arabic.
'bg', // bulgarian.
'ca', // catalan.
'cs', // czech.
'da', // danish.
'de', // german.
'el', // greek.
'en', // english.
'es', // spanish.
'et', // estonian.
'fi', // finnish.
'fr', // french.
'gl', // galician.
'he', // hebrew.
'hi', // hindi.
'hr', // croatian.
'hu', // hungarian.
'id', // indonesian.
'it', // italian.
'ja', // japanese.
'ko', // korean.
'ka', // georgian.
'lt', // lithuanian.
'lv', // latvian.
'ms', // malay.
'nl', // dutch.
'no', // norwegian.
'pl', // polish.
'pt', // portuguese.
'ro', // romanian.
'ru', // russian.
'sk', // slovak.
'sl', // slovenian.
'sq', // albanian.
'sr', // serbian.
'sv', // swedish.
'th', // thai.
'tr', // turkish.
'uk', // ukrainian.
'zh' // chinese.
);

// Redirect to the correct location.
// Example Implementation aff var lang to name file
/*
echo 'The Language detected is: '.lixlpixel_detect_lang(); // For Demonstration
echo "<br />";    
*/
$lang_var = lixlpixel_detect_lang(); //insert lang var system in a new var for conditional statement
/*
echo "<br />";    

echo $lang_var; // print var for trace

echo "<br />";    
*/
// Insert the right page iacoording with the language in the browser
switch ($lang_var){
    case "fr":
        //echo "PAGE DE";
        include("index_fr.php");//include check session DE
        break;
    case "it":
        //echo "PAGE IT";
        include("index_it.php");
        break;
    case "en":
        //echo "PAGE EN";
        include("index_en.php");
        break;        
    default:
        //echo "PAGE EN - Setting Default";
        include("index_en.php");//include EN in all other cases of different lang detection
        break;
}
?>
browser-detection cross-browser php
16 Answers

Unfortunately, none of the answers to this question takes into account some valid HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE such as:

  • q=0.8,en-US;q=0.5,en;q=0.3: having the q priority value at first place.
  • ZH-CN: old browsers that capitalise (wrongly) the whole langcode.
  • *: that basically say "serve whatever language you have".

After a comprehensive test with thousands of different Accept-Languages that reached my server, this is my language detection method:

define('SUPPORTED_LANGUAGES', ['en', 'es']);

function detect_language($fallback='en') {
    foreach (preg_split('/[;,]/', $_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE']) as $sub) {
        if (substr($sub, 0, 2) == 'q=') continue;
        if (strpos($sub, '-') !== false) $sub = explode('-', $sub)[0];
        if (in_array(strtolower($sub), SUPPORTED_LANGUAGES)) return $sub;
    }
    return $fallback;
}
user_18327280

Quick and simple:

$language = trim(substr( strtok(strtok($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'], ','), ';'), 0, 5));

NOTE: The first language code is what is being used by the browser, the rest are other languages the user has setup in the browser.

Some languages have a region code, eg. en-GB, others just have the language code, eg. sk.

If you just want the language and not the region (eg. en, fr, es, etc.), you can use:

$language =substr($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'], 0, 2);
user_19388020

There is a method in php-intl extension:

 locale_accept_from_http($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'])
user_13328370

FOR LARAVEL USERS, here's a single line of code that returns a very clean collection (or array) of preferred languages:

$langs = Str::of($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'])
        ->explode(',')
        ->transform(fn($lang) => Str::substr($lang, 0, 2))
        ->unique();
user_112921780

Try,

$lang = substr($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'], 0,2);

if ($lang == 'tr') {
include_once('include/language/tr.php');
}elseif ($lang == 'en') {
include_once('include/language/en.php');
}elseif ($lang == 'de') {
include_once('include/language/de.php');
}elseif ($lang == 'fr') {
include_once('include/language/fr.php');
}else{
include_once('include/language/tr.php');
}

Thanks to

user_11362530

Since PHP 5.3.0 there is a Locale class bundled with the php-intl extension which has a method for this:

echo Locale::acceptFromHttp($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE']);

or procedural style:

locale_accept_from_http($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE']);

https://www.php.net/manual/en/locale.acceptfromhttp.php

user_8518850
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