Detect Browser Language in PHP

Question

I use the following PHP script as index for my website.

This script should include a specific page depending on the browser\'s language (automatically detected).

Answer 1

Try this one:

#########################################################
# Copyright © 2008 Darrin Yeager                        #
# https://www.dyeager.org/                               #
# Licensed under BSD license.                           #
#   https://www.dyeager.org/downloads/license-bsd.txt    #
#########################################################

function getDefaultLanguage() {
   if (isset($_SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE"]))
      return parseDefaultLanguage($_SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE"]);
   else
      return parseDefaultLanguage(NULL);
   }

function parseDefaultLanguage($http_accept, $deflang = "en") {
   if(isset($http_accept) && strlen($http_accept) > 1)  {
      # Split possible languages into array
      $x = explode(",",$http_accept);
      foreach ($x as $val) {
         #check for q-value and create associative array. No q-value means 1 by rule
         if(preg_match("/(.*);q=([0-1]{0,1}.\d{0,4})/i",$val,$matches))
            $lang[$matches[1]] = (float)$matches[2];
         else
            $lang[$val] = 1.0;
      }

      #return default language (highest q-value)
      $qval = 0.0;
      foreach ($lang as $key => $value) {
         if ($value > $qval) {
            $qval = (float)$value;
            $deflang = $key;
         }
      }
   }
   return strtolower($deflang);
}

• https://www.dyeager.org/blog/2008/10/getting-browser-default-language-php.html

Answer 2

The following script is a modified version of Xeoncross's code (thank you for that Xeoncross) that falls-back to a default language setting if no languages match the supported ones, or if a match is found it replaces the default language setting with a new one according to the language priority.

In this scenario the user's browser is set in order of priority to Spanish, Dutch, US English and English and the application supports English and Dutch only with no regional variations and English is the default language. The order of the values in the "HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE" string is not important if for some reason the browser does not order the values correctly.

$supported_languages = array("en","nl");
$supported_languages = array_flip($supported_languages);
var_dump($supported_languages); // array(2) { ["en"]=> int(0) ["nl"]=> int(1) }

$http_accept_language = $_SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE"]; // es,nl;q=0.8,en-us;q=0.5,en;q=0.3

preg_match_all('~([\w-]+)(?:[^,\d]+([\d.]+))?~', strtolower($http_accept_language), $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER);

$available_languages = array();

foreach ($matches as $match)
{
    list($language_code,$language_region) = explode('-', $match[1]) + array('', '');

    $priority = isset($match[2]) ? (float) $match[2] : 1.0;

    $available_languages[][$language_code] = $priority;
}

var_dump($available_languages);

/*
array(4) {
    [0]=>
    array(1) {
        ["es"]=>
        float(1)
    }
    [1]=>
    array(1) {
        ["nl"]=>
        float(0.8)
    }
    [2]=>
    array(1) {
        ["en"]=>
        float(0.5)
    }
    [3]=>
    array(1) {
        ["en"]=>
        float(0.3)
    }
}
*/

$default_priority = (float) 0;
$default_language_code = 'en';

foreach ($available_languages as $key => $value)
{
    $language_code = key($value);
    $priority = $value[$language_code];

    if ($priority > $default_priority && array_key_exists($language_code,$supported_languages))
    {
        $default_priority = $priority;
        $default_language_code = $language_code;

        var_dump($default_priority); // float(0.8)
        var_dump($default_language_code); // string(2) "nl"
    }
}

var_dump($default_language_code); // string(2) "nl" 

Answer 3

I think the cleanest way is this!

 <?php
  $lang = substr($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'], 0, 2);
  $supportedLanguages=['en','fr','gr'];
  if(!in_array($lang,$supportedLanguages)){
     $lang='en';
  }
    require("index_".$lang.".php");

Answer 4

The official way to handle this is using the PECL HTTP library. Unlike some answers here, this correctly handles the language priorities (q-values), partial language matches and will return the closest match, or when there are no matches it falls back to the first language in your array.

PECL HTTP:
http://pecl.php.net/package/pecl_http

How to use:
http://php.net/manual/fa/function.http-negotiate-language.php

$supportedLanguages = [
    'en-US', // first one is the default/fallback
    'fr',
    'fr-FR',
    'de',
    'de-DE',
    'de-AT',
    'de-CH',
];

// Returns the negotiated language 
// or the default language (i.e. first array entry) if none match.
$language = http_negotiate_language($supportedLanguages, $result);

Answer 5

Try,

$lang = substr($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'], 0,2);

if ($lang == 'tr') {
include_once('include/language/tr.php');
}elseif ($lang == 'en') {
include_once('include/language/en.php');
}elseif ($lang == 'de') {
include_once('include/language/de.php');
}elseif ($lang == 'fr') {
include_once('include/language/fr.php');
}else{
include_once('include/language/tr.php');
}

Thanks to

Answer 6

Quick and simple:

$language = trim(substr( strtok(strtok($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'], ','), ';'), 0, 5));

NOTE: The first language code is what is being used by the browser, the rest are other languages the user has setup in the browser.

Some languages have a region code, eg. en-GB, others just have the language code, eg. sk.

If you just want the language and not the region (eg. en, fr, es, etc.), you can use:

$language =substr($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'], 0, 2);