How do I serve a site in multiple languages in Apache?

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I’m developing a website that needs to be available in 3 languages (only static content, to be served by Apache). I would like to make use of the language detection features so that the user already falls into a version compatible with the language preferences of your browser, but I also want him to be able to choose a different language through special links. It is possible to do this by Apache without using any language server-side?

I started reading the documentation on negotiation content and on the mod_negotiation, but I am quite lost because the examples given do not seem clear to me. What I understood so far (please correct me if I’m wrong) was the following:

  • I should create my pages according to a specific convention, ex.: index.html.pt, index.html.en, index.html.ja;

  • I must configure the Directory to enable content trading:

    <Directory /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        DirectoryIndex index.html
        AllowOverride None
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
        LanguagePriority en pt ja
        ForceLanguagePriority Prefer Fallback
</Directory>

  • Each page should link to the base name, without specifying the language, e.g..: href="index.html".

With this, from what I understand the server will be able to choose a version based on header Accept-Language that the browser sends. If this is correct, the first part is ok.

However, I have no idea how a link could change the current language of the page - and do so so so that it remains the current language even after the user clicks on other links. The documentation mentions "advanced techniques (such as cookies or special URL-paths)", but I couldn’t understand what it was about, and the linked documentation didn’t help much. Is there a simple way to do this? Give preference, without needing Javascript (but if there is no other way, fine).

apache cookies http-headers internationalization

  • To do directly in apache do not know, but it is also not necessary to javascript, can set cookies as soon as the page is sent in server-side language, depends on what you prefer, ie for example: meusite.com/pt (default if there are no cookies) has a link to meusite.com/en, there is soon part of the script (server side) that implements a cookie/session so that next times it is loaded meusite.com/en instead of meusite.com/en

  • I was noticing how the google algorithm works when it redirects from google.com to google.com or any other think it uses as criteria the ip and the accept-Language of the header of the requisicao think this would be the best way and put a language by default until there is a google application that automatically converts the language of the site without having to make changes on the pages so do not remember the name

  • 1

    Let’s wait for someone to clear up this doubt of yours now. :)

  • 1

    @drmcarvalho Thanks! This is no longer mere curiosity, I really need this for a job I’m doing. In the next few days, if I don’t have an answer I’ll search and try some options myself, and if I discover something useful I share here with the rest of the community.

2 answers

5

According to the W3C there is a certain ambiguity in mod_negotiation follows the link When to use language negotiation only to point out also exploit Apache HTTPD mod_negotiation Filename Bruter

but another alternative to circumvent this would be to set a cookie for each index

index.html.en

<html>
<head>
<title>ingles</title>
<meta http-equiv="Set-Cookie" content="lang=en; path=/en;>
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" link="#FF0000" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#FF0000">
<h1>bem vindo ao site do ingles</h1>
</body>
</html>

index.html.pt

<html>
<head>
<title>portuguse</title>
<meta http-equiv="Set-Cookie" content="lang=en; path=/pt;">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" link="#FF0000" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#FF0000">
<h1>Bem vindo ao Site do portuga!</h1>
</body>
</html>

index.html.jp

<html>
<head>
<title>japones</title>
<meta http-equiv="Set-Cookie" content="lang=en; path=/jp;">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" link="#FF0000" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#FF0000">
<h1>bem vindo ao site do japa</h1>
</body>
</html>

and create a directory for each

http://mydomain.com/en/
http://mydomain.com/pt/
http://mydomain.com/jp/

now and just add the following lines to your apache

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/?$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} lang=([^;]+)
RewriteRule .* http://mydomain.com/%1 [R=302,L]

SOURCES:

How to use the html tag HTTP-EQUIV "SET-COOKIE"

Using Apache2 Content Negotiation To Serve Different Languages

Check cookie and redirect with apache

  • 2

    Thank you for the answer! From what I understood, only the index would have special Urls (making it easy to change the language through a link), the rest would continue using mod_negotiation using the cookie set by the index. It seems feasible, I will do some tests to confirm. The material cited also looks interesting, I will give a deal calmer. + 1

3

First of all you must change the names of your files to end in . html, it must be to type index.pt.html

Then you can use mod_rewrite and mod_geoip to redirect traffic from certain ips per country to the intended pages.

https://linuxconfig.org/redirect-or-block-traffic-based-on-geographical-location-apache-geoip-mod

Add to apache on Ubuntu

# apt-get install libapache2-mod-geoip

Install the module

# apache2ctl -M | grep -E "geoip|rewrite"
geoip_module (shared)
rewrite_module (shared)

Restart to apache

# service apache2 restart

Then Edit your . htaccess and put

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{ENV:GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE} ^(PT|BR)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/index.$1.html [L]

  • Thanks for the reply, mod_geoip certainly brings an additional feature. Personally, I prefer the same mod_negotiation, since it takes into account the preferred language of the browser (and not only the physical location of the user).

  • @mgibsonbr Right, but think that many people use browsers in English even if they are in Br or Pt.

  • It is possible (by the way, I myself rsrs!), but whatever strategy is adopted, they will have false positives and false negatives. I suspect what to use negotiation as main and geoip as fallback would hit more often than not. But I could be wrong...

  • If you can do && then it is perfect. But this I don’t know. If not. You can do like steps an initial filter a case then redirect to another folder and filter through the other. But that’s just me theorizing. Not if it’s possible

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