with ngx-translate

Why use ngx-translate and not i18n?

We use ngx-translate because the i18n from Angular core is yet to support dynamic translation (without reloading the page) which is a must for our project. However it is suppose to land in Angular 6.x (still postponed) as the ngx-translate author wrote here, he is also 1 of the guy working on implementing it in the Angular core. When the i18n Service supports dynamic translation, I will revisit this implementation but in the mean time we will stick with ngx-translate.

Demo

Demo Page / Demo Component / Translation Files

ngx-translate setup

Demo Component

Angular Versions and ngx-translate

In order to use ngx-translate, you will have to use @ngx-translate/core and possibly @ngx-translate/http-loader. Check the table below to find the correct version to use and get more info from their website: https://ngx-translate.org/getting-started/installation/

Angular Version	@ngx-translate/core
21+	17.x
16 - 19+	16.x
16 - 17+	16.x (15.x)

1. for Angular-Slickgrid < 10.0

Minimal installation (even if you are not using any other locales)

If you use only 1 locale, you can now disregard ngx-translate installation completely, head over to the new Wiki - Providing Custom Locale for more details. But if you still wish to install the minimum installation to get ngx-translate then continue reading.

Install NPM package

npm install @ngx-translate/core

App Module

import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { TranslateModule } from '@ngx-translate/core';
import { AngularSlickgridModule } from 'angular-slickgrid';

@NgModule({
  declarations: [
    AppComponent
  ],
  imports: [
    BrowserModule,
    TranslateModule.forRoot()
  ],
  providers: [],
  bootstrap: [AppComponent]
})
export class AppModule { }

Regular Installation

NPM

You need to make sure that you have @ngx-translate/core installed. Then optionally, you will need a loader, the most recommended one is @ngx-translate/http-loader. For more installation and usage information, you can visit the official ngx-translate site

npm install @ngx-translate/core @ngx-translate/http-loader

App initializer (optional)

If you use the recommended http-loader, you might encounter some async problem with Angular-Slickgrid. The reason is simple, SlickGrid is a jQuery lib and it's Formatters and everything else needs to return data instantly (not asynchronously) and Angular-Slickgrid uses the .instant(key) function and the data must be loaded prior to performing the .instant(). So to avoid such async problem, it is recommended to use an App Initializer as documented here, this will make sure that you will start loading the page once all the translation data is ready.

App Module

As mentioned in previous paragraph, you can choose multiple type of loader. However, if you choose the recommended http-loader and the App Initializer describe earlier, then your App module should have something along these lines

import { HttpClient, HttpClientModule } from '@angular/common/http';
import { Injector, APP_INITIALIZER, NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { LOCATION_INITIALIZED } from '@angular/common';
import { TranslateModule, TranslateLoader, TranslateService } from '@ngx-translate/core';
import { TranslateHttpLoader } from '@ngx-translate/http-loader';

// for @ngx-translate <=16.0
// AoT requires an exported function for factories
export function createTranslateLoader(http: HttpClient) {
  return new TranslateHttpLoader(http, './assets/i18n/', '.json');
}

// use an Initializer Factory as describe here: https://github.com/ngx-translate/core/issues/517#issuecomment-299637956
export function appInitializerFactory(translate: TranslateService, injector: Injector) {
  return () => new Promise<any>((resolve: any) => {
    const locationInitialized = injector.get(LOCATION_INITIALIZED, Promise.resolve(null));
    locationInitialized.then(() => {
      const langToSet = 'en';
      translate.setFallbackLang('en'); // OR `translate.setDefaultLang('en')` for ngx-translate<=16
      translate.use(langToSet).subscribe(() => {
        // console.info(`Successfully initialized '${langToSet}' language.'`);
      }, err => {
        console.error(`Problem with '${langToSet}' language initialization.'`);
      }, () => {
        resolve(null);
      });
    });
  });
}

@NgModule({
  declarations: [
    AppComponent
  ],
  imports: [
    BrowserModule,
    HttpClientModule,

    // for @ngx-translate <=16.0 (ONLY)
    TranslateModule.forRoot({
      loader: {
        provide: TranslateLoader,
        useFactory: (createTranslateLoader),
        deps: [HttpClient]
      }
    })
  ],
  providers: [
    {
      provide: APP_INITIALIZER,
      useFactory: appInitializerFactory,
      deps: [TranslateService, Injector],
      multi: true
    },
    // for @ngx-translate >=17.0
    provideTranslateService({
      fallbackLang: 'en',
      loader: provideTranslateHttpLoader({ prefix: './assets/i18n/', suffix: '.json' }),
    }),
    GridOdataService,
    ResizerService
  ],
  bootstrap: [AppComponent]
})
export class AppModule { }

Angular 7+

The new updated version of ng-packagr use strict metadata and you might get errors about Lambda not supported, to bypass this problem you can add the @dynamic over the @NgModule as so:

// @dynamic
@NgModule({
  ...
})

2. for Angular-Slickgrid >= 10.0

App Initializer

The App initializer is useful to fetch all translactions locales asynchronously before any of the component loads. This step is important if you need to fetch translations from JSON assets in an asynchronous step before any other component loads.

You can move the App Initializer to a separate file or simply add it to your main.ts

// app-initializer.ts
import { LOCATION_INITIALIZED } from '@angular/common';
import { type Injector } from '@angular/core';
import { TranslateService } from '@ngx-translate/core';

// use an Initializer Factory as describe here: https://github.com/ngx-translate/core/issues/517#issuecomment-299637956
export function appInitializerFactory(translate: TranslateService, injector: Injector) {
  return () =>
    new Promise<any>((resolve: any) => {
      const locationInitialized = injector.get(LOCATION_INITIALIZED, Promise.resolve(null));
      locationInitialized.then(() => {
        const langToSet = 'en';
        translate.setFallbackLang('en');
        translate.use(langToSet).subscribe({
          next: () => {
            // console.info(`Successfully initialized '${langToSet}' language.'`);
          },
          error: () => console.error(`Problem with '${langToSet}' language initialization.'`),
          complete: () => resolve(null),
        });
      });
    });
}

then use it in your App main.ts

// main.ts
import { provideHttpClient, withInterceptorsFromDi } from '@angular/common/http';
import { enableProdMode, importProvidersFrom, inject, Injector, provideAppInitializer, provideZoneChangeDetection } from '@angular/core';
import { provideTranslateService, TranslateService } from '@ngx-translate/core';
import { provideTranslateHttpLoader } from '@ngx-translate/http-loader';
import { AppComponent } from './demos/app.component';
import { appInitializerFactory } from './demos/app.initializer';
import { AngularSlickgridComponent, GridOption } from 'angular-slickgrid';

// define Angular-Slickgrid default grid options that are common to all grids
const gridOptionConfig: GridOption = {
  enableAutoResize: true,
  // ...
};

bootstrapApplication(AppComponent, {
  providers: [
    AngularSlickgridComponent,
    { provide: 'defaultGridOption', useValue: gridOptionConfig },

    // load your App Initializer to pre-fetch your translations
    provideAppInitializer(() => {
      const initializerFn = appInitializerFactory(inject(TranslateService), inject(Injector));
      return initializerFn();
    }),

    // configure ngx-translate
    provideTranslateService({
      fallbackLang: 'en',
      loader: provideTranslateHttpLoader({ prefix: './assets/i18n/', suffix: '.json' }),
    }),
    provideHttpClient(withInterceptorsFromDi()),
  ],
}).catch((err) => console.log(err));

3. Locales

The final step is that you need the actual translations. Note that ngx-translate does not support multiple files, with that in mind see below for the following options that you have.

1. Manually copy the translation keys/values

2. Manually copy the JSON files to your src/assets folder

3. Modify angular-cli.json to copy the JSON files to your src/assets folder.

   • I tried following these instructions but that didn't work

4. Modify your package.json and add a script to copy the JSON files to your src/assets folder

   • install NPM packages native-copyfiles (npm install native-copyfiles)

   • add a new script in your package.json

   • run the below script once with npm run copy:i18n and you should now have the JSON files in your src/assets folder

"copy:i18n": "copyfiles -f node_modules/angular-slickgrid/i18n/*.json src/assets/i18n"

If you want to manually re-create the translation in your own files, the list of translations that you will need are displayed in the asset i18n translation folder (from that file, you need all translations shown before the 'BILLING', the next few ones are for the demo page only)