Internationalization

What it is

Ignite ships with two locales, English (en) and French (fr), covering both the backend (validation messages, mail, flash toasts) and the frontend (Vue component strings). The supported set is a single source of truth in config/locales.php:

php

'supported' => [
    'en' => 'English',
    'fr' => 'Français',
],

Prerequisites

None. Both shipped locales work out of the box with no configuration.

The env vars: `APP_LOCALE` / `APP_FALLBACK_LOCALE`

ini

APP_LOCALE=en
APP_FALLBACK_LOCALE=en

Both default to en in .env.example. APP_FALLBACK_LOCALE is the locale App\Http\Middleware\SetLocale falls back to when nothing else resolves a supported locale for the request.

How the locale is resolved

SetLocale runs on every request and picks the active locale in this order:

The authenticated user's persisted locale column, if logged in.
A guest locale cookie (App\Support\GuestLocale), used before registration.
The browser's Accept-Language header, negotiated against config('locales.supported').
APP_FALLBACK_LOCALE.

Any resolved value outside the supported list is rejected back to the fallback, so an unsupported Accept-Language or a tampered cookie can't select a locale with no translation files.

On the frontend, resources/js/lib/i18n.ts boots laravel-vue-i18n from the locale the server already resolved (read off the <html lang> attribute), so the client and server never disagree on first paint.

Translation file layout

lang/<locale>/*.php: PHP-array translation files, one per domain (auth.php, goals.php, validation.php, toasts.php, and so on). These exist for both lang/en/ and lang/fr/.
lang/<locale>.json: flat string-key translations used by laravel-vue-i18n's $t() on the frontend. Only lang/en.json exists today; French frontend strings are served from the PHP files only (compiled to php_fr.json at build time by the laravel-vue-i18n Vite plugin).
resources/js/lib/i18n.ts merges the build-time-generated php_<locale>.json with the hand-written <locale>.json at runtime, JSON winning on key collisions.

Adding a new locale

Add the locale code and display name to config/locales.php's supported array.
Create lang/<locale>/ with the same PHP files as lang/en/, translated.
Optionally add lang/<locale>.json for any frontend-only strings not covered by the PHP files.
Rebuild frontend assets (npm run build or restart npm run dev) so the Vite plugin picks up the new php_<locale>.json.

How to verify

Switch locale via the in-app language switcher (LanguageSwitcher.vue / LocaleSelect.vue) and confirm both page chrome and validation error text change.
Send a request with Accept-Language: fr and no session/cookie locale; the response should render in French.
Check a logged-in user's locale column takes priority over both the cookie and the header.

See Configuration for the full environment variable reference.

Internationalization ​

What it is ​

Prerequisites ​

The env vars: APP_LOCALE / APP_FALLBACK_LOCALE ​

How the locale is resolved ​

Translation file layout ​

Adding a new locale ​

How to verify ​