[Django]-"gettext()" vs "gettext_lazy()" in Django

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246đź‘Ť

âś…

gettext() vs. gettext_lazy()

In definitions like forms or models you should use gettext_lazy because the code of this definitions is only executed once (mostly on django’s startup); gettext_lazy translates the strings in a lazy fashion, which means, eg. every time you access the name of an attribute on a model the string will be newly translated-which totally makes sense because you might be looking at this model in different languages since django was started!

In views and similar function calls you can use gettext without problems, because everytime the view is called gettext will be newly executed, so you will always get the right translation fitting the request!

Regarding gettext_noop()

As Bryce pointed out in his answer, this function marks a string as extractable for translation but does return the untranslated string. This is useful for using the string in two places – translated and untranslated. See the following example:

import logging
from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.utils.translation import gettext as _, gettext_noop as _noop

def view(request):
    msg = _noop("An error has occurred")
    logging.error(msg)
    return HttpResponse(_(msg))
👤Bernhard Vallant

23đź‘Ť

An excellent use of _noop, is when you want to log a message in English for the developers, but present the translated string to a viewer. An example of this is at http://blog.bessas.me/posts/using-gettext-in-django/

👤Bryce

9đź‘Ť

The lazy version returns a proxy object instead of a string and in some situation it would not work as expected. For example:

def get(self, request, format=None):
   search_str = request.GET.get('search', '')
   data = self.search(search_str)
   lst = []
   lst.append({'name': ugettext_lazy('Client'), 'result': data})
   return HttpResponse(json.dumps(lst), content_type='application/json')

would fail because very last line would try serialize lst object into JSON and instead of a string for “client” it would have a proxy object. The proxy object is not serializeable into json.

👤Alex Protyagov

0đź‘Ť

gettext() can work inside functions but doesn’t work outside functions.

gettext_lazy() can work inside and outside functions.

*You better use gettext_lazy() outside functions according to the examples of Translation.

<gettext()>

This below is where gettext() can work:

# "my_app1/views.py"

from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.utils.translation import gettext as _

def hello(request):
    HttpResponse(_("Hello")) # Here

<gettext_lazy()>

This below is where gettext_lazy() can work:

# "core/settings.py"

from django.utils.translation import gettext_lazy as _

LANGUAGES = (
    ('en', _('English')),
    ('fr', _('French'))
)

# "my_app1/views.py"

from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.utils.translation import gettext_lazy as _

def hello(request): # Here
    HttpResponse(_("Hello"))

# "my_app1/urls.py"

from django.urls import path
from . import views
from django.utils.translation import gettext_lazy as _

app_name = "my_app1"

urlpatterns = [
    path(_('hello'), views.hello, name="hello"),
]        # Here

# "my_app1/models.py"

from django.db import models
from django.utils.translation import gettext_lazy as _

class Person(models.Model):                             # Here
    name = models.CharField(max_length=20, verbose_name=_("name"))

    class Meta:
        verbose_name = _('person') # Here
        verbose_name_plural = _('persons') # Here

# "my_app1/admin.py"

from django.contrib import admin
from django import forms
from .models import Person
from django.utils.translation import gettext_lazy as _

admin.site.site_title = _('My site title') # Here
admin.site.site_header = _('My site header') # Here
admin.site.index_title = _('My index title') # Here

class PersonForm(forms.ModelForm): # Here
    name = forms.CharField(label=_('name')) 

    class Meta:
        model = Person
        fields = "__all__"

@admin.register(Person)
class PersonAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):    
    form = PersonForm

# "my_app1/apps.py"

from django.apps import AppConfig
from django.utils.translation import gettext_lazy as _

class App1Config(AppConfig):
    default_auto_field = 'django.db.models.BigAutoField'
    name = 'my_app1'
    verbose_name = _('my app1') # Here
👤Super Kai – Kazuya Ito

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