Symfony 2.1 set locale - symfony

Question

Does anybody know how to set the locale in Symfony2.1?
I am trying with:
$this->get('session')->set('_locale', 'en_US');
and
$this->get('request')->setLocale('en_US');
but none of those has any effect, the devbar tells me:
Session Attributes: No session attributes
Anyway, it is always the fallback locale that is used, as defined in config.yml
(PS: I am trying to set up the translation system as described here

Answer 1

Even though the Symfony 2.1 states that you can simply set the locale via the Request or Session objects, I never managed to have it working, setting the locale simply has no effect.
So I ended up using a listener coupled with twig routing to handle the locale/language:
The listener:
namespace FK\MyWebsiteBundle\Listener;
use Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Event\GetResponseEvent;
use Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\KernelEvents;
use Symfony\Component\EventDispatcher\EventSubscriberInterface;
class LocaleListener implements EventSubscriberInterface
{
private $defaultLocale;
public function __construct($defaultLocale = 'en')
{
$this->defaultLocale = $defaultLocale;
}
public function onKernelRequest(GetResponseEvent $event)
{
$request = $event->getRequest();
if (!$request->hasPreviousSession()) {
return;
}
if ($locale = $request->attributes->get('_locale')) {
$request->getSession()->set('_locale', $locale);
} else {
$request->setLocale($request->getSession()->get('_locale', $this->defaultLocale));
}
}
static public function getSubscribedEvents()
{
return array(
// must be registered before the default Locale listener
KernelEvents::REQUEST => array(array('onKernelRequest', 17)),
);
}
}
Register the listener in service.xml:
<service id="fk.my.listener" class="FK\MyWebsiteBundle\Listener\LocaleListener">
<argument>%locale%</argument>
<tag name="kernel.event_subscriber"/>
</service>
The routing must look like:
homepage:
pattern: /{_locale}
defaults: { _controller: FKMyWebsiteBundle:Default:index, _locale: en }
requirements:
_locale: en|fr|zh
And handle the routing with:
{% for locale in ['en', 'fr', 'zh'] %}
<a href="{{ path(app.request.get('_route'), app.request.get('_route_params')|merge({'_locale' : locale})) }}">
{% endfor %}
This way, the locale will automatically be set when you click on a link to change the language.

Answer 2

You set the locale in your parameters.yml.
[parameters]
...
locale = en
The fallback from your config.yml references %locale% which is the setting from the above parameters.yml file.
If you are trying to set it on-the-fly then this should work:
$this->get('session')->setLocale('en_US');
Test it by printing it out straight after:
print_r($this->get('session')->getLocale());
Edit
In 2.1 the locale is now stored in the request but can still be set in the session. http://symfony.com/doc/2.1/book/translation.html#handling-the-user-s-locale
$this->get('session')->set('_locale', 'en_US');
// setting via request with get and setLocale
$request = $this->getRequest();
$locale = $request->getLocale();
$request->setLocale('en_US');

Answer 3

It's not:
$this->get('request')->setLocale('en_US');
But:
$this->get('request')->getSession()->set('_locale', 'en_US');

Answer 4

From the symfony cookbook:
"Locale is stored in the Request, which means that it's not "sticky" during a user's request. In this article, you'll learn how to make the locale of a user "sticky" so that once it's set, that same locale will be used for every subsequent request."
http://symfony.com/doc/current/cookbook/session/locale_sticky_session.html
You can notice this when you set the locale and use the symfony profiler (in dev mode) to view the sub requests.