Rails I18n translations scoping

Question

Writing a fully translated app can become tedious. Is there a way to set a default translation scope for the current context ?

Example : I am writing inside a partial _deadlines.html.erb in the show.html.erb action of my ProjectsController

Now because I am trying to be a good programmer, I am scoping all my translations. I would like to produce the following tree

projects:
  deadlines:
    now: "Hurry the deadline is today !"
    ....

How can I make it less tedious than writing each time the full scope ?

projects/show.html.erb

...
<%= render 'projects/deadlines', project: @project %>
...

projects/_deadlines.html.erb called from show.html.erb

<p>Deadline : <%= t(:now, scope: [:projects, :deadlines]) %></p>

Is there a way to set a default scope for the current context (here the whole _deadlines.html.erb file) ?

EDIT

Some people suggested to use Rails Lazy lookup, but this does not produce the scoping I'm looking for. In my case, I want to skip the action default scope (show, index, etc...) and add a scope for the current partial I am rendering (in my case _deadlines.html.erb)

Rails lazy lookup :

t('.now')
<=> t(:now, scope: [:projects, :show]

But I wanted :

t('.now')
<=> t(:now, scope: [:projects, :deadlines]

Answer 1

Rails implements a convenient way to look up the locale inside views. When you have the following dictionary:

es:
  projects:
    index:  # in 'index.html.erb' template file
      title: "Título"
    deadlines:  # in '_deadlines.html.erb' partial file
      title: "Fecha límite"

you can look up these values as below:

# app/views/projects/index.html.erb
<%= t '.title' %>  # => "Título"

# app/views/projects/_deadlines.html.erb
<%= t '.title' %>  # => "Fecha límite"

Answer 2

Okay I was actuall still not happy with this. This default 'lazy lookup' scope is totally krap when you want to translate the same thing at different places. Say I have two different partials that contain information dealing with the same model. Using lazy lookup, I would need to have the same translation twice in my yml file.

Here's a little piece of code that you can put in your application helper. It's basically an override of the default I18n.t that will set the scope to @t_scope when it is defined, and you don't need to worry about the scope anymore

My code addition

helpers/application_helper.rb

def t(*args)
  # If there is just one param and we have defined a translation scope in the view
  # only using symbols right now, need extended version to handle strings
  if args.size == 1 and args.first.is_a?(Symbol) and @t_scope
    super(args.shift, @t_scope)
  else
    super(*args)
  end
end

def set_t_scope(scope)
  push_t_scope(@t_scope ||= {})
  replace_t_scope(scope)
end
alias :t_scope :set_t_scope

def replace_t_scope(scope)
  @t_scope = {scope: scope}
end

def push_t_scope(scope)
  (@tscope_stack ||= []) << scope
end

def pop_t_scope
  @t_scope = @tscope_stack.pop
end

What you can do with it

projects/show.html.erb

<%= t_scope([:projects, :deadlines]) %>
<fieldset>
  <legend>Deadlines</legend>
  <% if Time.now > @project.deadline.expected_finish_date %>
  <p><%= t(:hurry) %></p>
  <% else %>
  <p><%= t(:you_have_time) %>
</fieldset>
<fieldset>
  <legend>Deadlines</legend>
  <%= render 'tasks', tasks: @project.tasks %>
...

views/projects/_tasks.html.erb

<%= t_scope([:projects, :tasks]) %>
  <% tasks.each do | task| %>
  <h2><%= t(:person_in_charge) %></h2>
  ...
<% pop_t_scope %>  

en.yml

en:
  projects:
    deadlines:
      hurry: "Hurry man !"
      you_have_time: "Relax, there's still time"
    tasks:
      person_in_charge: 'The Boss is %{name}'

Now the only problem that I see, is that when rendering multiple partials from a view, the @t_scope will be transferred and could potentiall cause problems. However wouldn't be a problem is @t_scope is set to nil at the beginning of each file