Is there a way to get the list of available locales in PHP?

Question

In Java, you can call Locale.getAvailableLocales() to get the list of available locales.

I was expecting an equivalent from the PHP Locale class, but co

Answer 1

Part of the confusion here is that PHP has two concepts called "locale" that are pretty much totally separate.

The first is the older one, which basically just uses the C locale features. That's what's behind setlocale and the locale support in some of PHP's functions (like money_format for example). This is what other answers that mention running locale -a on the command line and using setlocale are talking about.

PHP's Locale class and the other related functionality from the intl extension is newer, and doesn't work the same way. Instead of using the libc locale stuff, it uses a library called ICU, which ships its own locale data. PHP does provide a method to determine which locales are supported by this system: ResourceBundle::getLocales. The documentation is a little wooly here, but you can call this as a static method and pass the blank string to use ICU's default resources, thus getting a list of the supported locales for intl:

ResourceBundle::getLocales('');

Answer 2

I don't think there is a built in functions for this. You need to ask the operating system which locales are installed.

For example, if you run on a unix system you will need to execute the command:

$ locale -a

Answer 3

I also now solved this problem. Here's what happened.

<?php
return array(
    'aa_DJ' => 'Afar (Djibouti)',
    'aa_ER' => 'Afar (Eritrea)',
    'aa_ET' => 'Afar (Ethiopia)',
    'af_ZA' => 'Afrikaans (South Africa)',
    'sq_AL' => 'Albanian (Albania)',
    'sq_MK' => 'Albanian (Macedonia)',
    'am_ET' => 'Amharic (Ethiopia)',
    'ar_DZ' => 'Arabic (Algeria)',
    'ar_BH' => 'Arabic (Bahrain)',
    'ar_EG' => 'Arabic (Egypt)',
    'ar_IN' => 'Arabic (India)',
    'ar_IQ' => 'Arabic (Iraq)',
    'ar_JO' => 'Arabic (Jordan)',
    'ar_KW' => 'Arabic (Kuwait)',
    'ar_LB' => 'Arabic (Lebanon)',
    'ar_LY' => 'Arabic (Libya)',
    'ar_MA' => 'Arabic (Morocco)',
    'ar_OM' => 'Arabic (Oman)',
    'ar_QA' => 'Arabic (Qatar)',
    'ar_SA' => 'Arabic (Saudi Arabia)',
    'ar_SD' => 'Arabic (Sudan)',
    'ar_SY' => 'Arabic (Syria)',
    'ar_TN' => 'Arabic (Tunisia)',
    'ar_AE' => 'Arabic (United Arab Emirates)',
    'ar_YE' => 'Arabic (Yemen)',
    'an_ES' => 'Aragonese (Spain)',
    'hy_AM' => 'Armenian (Armenia)',
    'as_IN' => 'Assamese (India)',
    'ast_ES' => 'Asturian (Spain)',
    'az_AZ' => 'Azerbaijani (Azerbaijan)',
    'az_TR' => 'Azerbaijani (Turkey)',
    'eu_FR' => 'Basque (France)',
    'eu_ES' => 'Basque (Spain)',
    'be_BY' => 'Belarusian (Belarus)',
    'bem_ZM' => 'Bemba (Zambia)',
    'bn_BD' => 'Bengali (Bangladesh)',
    'bn_IN' => 'Bengali (India)',
    'ber_DZ' => 'Berber (Algeria)',
    'ber_MA' => 'Berber (Morocco)',
    'byn_ER' => 'Blin (Eritrea)',
    'bs_BA' => 'Bosnian (Bosnia and Herzegovina)',
    'br_FR' => 'Breton (France)',
    'bg_BG' => 'Bulgarian (Bulgaria)',
    'my_MM' => 'Burmese (Myanmar [Burma])',
    'ca_AD' => 'Catalan (Andorra)',
    'ca_FR' => 'Catalan (France)',
    'ca_IT' => 'Catalan (Italy)',
    'ca_ES' => 'Catalan (Spain)',
    'zh_CN' => 'Chinese (China)',
    'zh_HK' => 'Chinese (Hong Kong SAR China)',
    'zh_SG' => 'Chinese (Singapore)',
    'zh_TW' => 'Chinese (Taiwan)',
    'cv_RU' => 'Chuvash (Russia)',
    'kw_GB' => 'Cornish (United Kingdom)',
    'crh_UA' => 'Crimean Turkish (Ukraine)',
    'hr_HR' => 'Croatian (Croatia)',
    'cs_CZ' => 'Czech (Czech Republic)',
    'da_DK' => 'Danish (Denmark)',
    'dv_MV' => 'Divehi (Maldives)',
    'nl_AW' => 'Dutch (Aruba)',
    'nl_BE' => 'Dutch (Belgium)',
    'nl_NL' => 'Dutch (Netherlands)',
    'dz_BT' => 'Dzongkha (Bhutan)',
    'en_AG' => 'English (Antigua and Barbuda)',
    'en_AU' => 'English (Australia)',
    'en_BW' => 'English (Botswana)',
    'en_CA' => 'English (Canada)',
    'en_DK' => 'English (Denmark)',
    'en_HK' => 'English (Hong Kong SAR China)',
    'en_IN' => 'English (India)',
    'en_IE' => 'English (Ireland)',
    'en_NZ' => 'English (New Zealand)',
    'en_NG' => 'English (Nigeria)',
    'en_PH' => 'English (Philippines)',
    'en_SG' => 'English (Singapore)',
    'en_ZA' => 'English (South Africa)',
    'en_GB' => 'English (United Kingdom)',
    'en_US' => 'English (United States)',
    'en_ZM' => 'English (Zambia)',
    'en_ZW' => 'English (Zimbabwe)',
    'eo' => 'Esperanto',
    'et_EE' => 'Estonian (Estonia)',
    'fo_FO' => 'Faroese (Faroe Islands)',
    'fil_PH' => 'Filipino (Philippines)',
    'fi_FI' => 'Finnish (Finland)',
    'fr_BE' => 'French (Belgium)',
    'fr_CA' => 'French (Canada)',
    'fr_FR' => 'French (France)',
    'fr_LU' => 'French (Luxembourg)',
    'fr_CH' => 'French (Switzerland)',
    'fur_IT' => 'Friulian (Italy)',
    'ff_SN' => 'Fulah (Senegal)',
    'gl_ES' => 'Galician (Spain)',
    'lg_UG' => 'Ganda (Uganda)',
    'gez_ER' => 'Geez (Eritrea)',
    'gez_ET' => 'Geez (Ethiopia)',
    'ka_GE' => 'Georgian (Georgia)',
    'de_AT' => 'German (Austria)',
    'de_BE' => 'German (Belgium)',
    'de_DE' => 'German (Germany)',
    'de_LI' => 'German (Liechtenstein)',
    'de_LU' => 'German (Luxembourg)',
    'de_CH' => 'German (Switzerland)',
    'el_CY' => 'Greek (Cyprus)',
    'el_GR' => 'Greek (Greece)',
    'gu_IN' => 'Gujarati (India)',
    'ht_HT' => 'Haitian (Haiti)',
    'ha_NG' => 'Hausa (Nigeria)',
    'iw_IL' => 'Hebrew (Israel)',
    'he_IL' => 'Hebrew (Israel)',
    'hi_IN' => 'Hindi (India)',
    'hu_HU' => 'Hungarian (Hungary)',
    'is_IS' => 'Icelandic (Iceland)',
    'ig_NG' => 'Igbo (Nigeria)',
    'id_ID' => 'Indonesian (Indonesia)',
    'ia' => 'Interlingua',
    'iu_CA' => 'Inuktitut (Canada)',
    'ik_CA' => 'Inupiaq (Canada)',
    'ga_IE' => 'Irish (Ireland)',
    'it_IT' => 'Italian (Italy)',
    'it_CH' => 'Italian (Switzerland)',
    'ja_JP' => 'Japanese (Japan)',
    'kl_GL' => 'Kalaallisut (Greenland)',
    'kn_IN' => 'Kannada (India)',
    'ks_IN' => 'Kashmiri (India)',
    'csb_PL' => 'Kashubian (Poland)',
    'kk_KZ' => 'Kazakh (Kazakhstan)',
    'km_KH' => 'Khmer (Cambodia)',
    'rw_RW' => 'Kinyarwanda (Rwanda)',
    'ky_KG' => 'Kirghiz (Kyrgyzstan)',
    'kok_IN' => 'Konkani (India)',
    'ko_KR' => 'Korean (South Korea)',
    'ku_TR' => 'Kurdish (Turkey)',
    'lo_LA' => 'Lao (Laos)',
    'lv_LV' => 'Latvian (Latvia)',
    'li_BE' => 'Limburgish (Belgium)',
    'li_NL' => 'Limburgish (Netherlands)',
    'lt_LT' => 'Lithuanian (Lithuania)',
    'nds_DE' => 'Low German (Germany)',
    'nds_NL' => 'Low German (Netherlands)',
    'mk_MK' => 'Macedonian (Macedonia)',
    'mai_IN' => 'Maithili (India)',
    'mg_MG' => 'Malagasy (Madagascar)',
    'ms_MY' => 'Malay (Malaysia)',
    'ml_IN' => 'Malayalam (India)',
    'mt_MT' => 'Maltese (Malta)',
    'gv_GB' => 'Manx (United Kingdom)',
    'mi_NZ' => 'Maori (New Zealand)',
    'mr_IN' => 'Marathi (India)',
    'mn_MN' => 'Mongolian (Mongolia)',
    'ne_NP' => 'Nepali (Nepal)',
    'se_NO' => 'Northern Sami (Norway)',
    'nso_ZA' => 'Northern Sotho (South Africa)',
    'nb_NO' => 'Norwegian Bokmål (Norway)',
    'nn_NO' => 'Norwegian Nynorsk (Norway)',
    'oc_FR' => 'Occitan (France)',
    'or_IN' => 'Oriya (India)',
    'om_ET' => 'Oromo (Ethiopia)',
    'om_KE' => 'Oromo (Kenya)',
    'os_RU' => 'Ossetic (Russia)',
    'pap_AN' => 'Papiamento (Netherlands Antilles)',
    'ps_AF' => 'Pashto (Afghanistan)',
    'fa_IR' => 'Persian (Iran)',
    'pl_PL' => 'Polish (Poland)',
    'pt_BR' => 'Portuguese (Brazil)',
    'pt_PT' => 'Portuguese (Portugal)',
    'pa_IN' => 'Punjabi (India)',
    'pa_PK' => 'Punjabi (Pakistan)',
    'ro_RO' => 'Romanian (Romania)',
    'ru_RU' => 'Russian (Russia)',
    'ru_UA' => 'Russian (Ukraine)',
    'sa_IN' => 'Sanskrit (India)',
    'sc_IT' => 'Sardinian (Italy)',
    'gd_GB' => 'Scottish Gaelic (United Kingdom)',
    'sr_ME' => 'Serbian (Montenegro)',
    'sr_RS' => 'Serbian (Serbia)',
    'sid_ET' => 'Sidamo (Ethiopia)',
    'sd_IN' => 'Sindhi (India)',
    'si_LK' => 'Sinhala (Sri Lanka)',
    'sk_SK' => 'Slovak (Slovakia)',
    'sl_SI' => 'Slovenian (Slovenia)',
    'so_DJ' => 'Somali (Djibouti)',
    'so_ET' => 'Somali (Ethiopia)',
    'so_KE' => 'Somali (Kenya)',
    'so_SO' => 'Somali (Somalia)',
    'nr_ZA' => 'South Ndebele (South Africa)',
    'st_ZA' => 'Southern Sotho (South Africa)',
    'es_AR' => 'Spanish (Argentina)',
    'es_BO' => 'Spanish (Bolivia)',
    'es_CL' => 'Spanish (Chile)',
    'es_CO' => 'Spanish (Colombia)',
    'es_CR' => 'Spanish (Costa Rica)',
    'es_DO' => 'Spanish (Dominican Republic)',
    'es_EC' => 'Spanish (Ecuador)',
    'es_SV' => 'Spanish (El Salvador)',
    'es_GT' => 'Spanish (Guatemala)',
    'es_HN' => 'Spanish (Honduras)',
    'es_MX' => 'Spanish (Mexico)',
    'es_NI' => 'Spanish (Nicaragua)',
    'es_PA' => 'Spanish (Panama)',
    'es_PY' => 'Spanish (Paraguay)',
    'es_PE' => 'Spanish (Peru)',
    'es_ES' => 'Spanish (Spain)',
    'es_US' => 'Spanish (United States)',
    'es_UY' => 'Spanish (Uruguay)',
    'es_VE' => 'Spanish (Venezuela)',
    'sw_KE' => 'Swahili (Kenya)',
    'sw_TZ' => 'Swahili (Tanzania)',
    'ss_ZA' => 'Swati (South Africa)',
    'sv_FI' => 'Swedish (Finland)',
    'sv_SE' => 'Swedish (Sweden)',
    'tl_PH' => 'Tagalog (Philippines)',
    'tg_TJ' => 'Tajik (Tajikistan)',
    'ta_IN' => 'Tamil (India)',
    'tt_RU' => 'Tatar (Russia)',
    'te_IN' => 'Telugu (India)',
    'th_TH' => 'Thai (Thailand)',
    'bo_CN' => 'Tibetan (China)',
    'bo_IN' => 'Tibetan (India)',
    'tig_ER' => 'Tigre (Eritrea)',
    'ti_ER' => 'Tigrinya (Eritrea)',
    'ti_ET' => 'Tigrinya (Ethiopia)',
    'ts_ZA' => 'Tsonga (South Africa)',
    'tn_ZA' => 'Tswana (South Africa)',
    'tr_CY' => 'Turkish (Cyprus)',
    'tr_TR' => 'Turkish (Turkey)',
    'tk_TM' => 'Turkmen (Turkmenistan)',
    'ug_CN' => 'Uighur (China)',
    'uk_UA' => 'Ukrainian (Ukraine)',
    'hsb_DE' => 'Upper Sorbian (Germany)',
    'ur_PK' => 'Urdu (Pakistan)',
    'uz_UZ' => 'Uzbek (Uzbekistan)',
    've_ZA' => 'Venda (South Africa)',
    'vi_VN' => 'Vietnamese (Vietnam)',
    'wa_BE' => 'Walloon (Belgium)',
    'cy_GB' => 'Welsh (United Kingdom)',
    'fy_DE' => 'Western Frisian (Germany)',
    'fy_NL' => 'Western Frisian (Netherlands)',
    'wo_SN' => 'Wolof (Senegal)',
    'xh_ZA' => 'Xhosa (South Africa)',
    'yi_US' => 'Yiddish (United States)',
    'yo_NG' => 'Yoruba (Nigeria)',
    'zu_ZA' => 'Zulu (South Africa)'
);

Answer 4

On Windows you can try to call the setlocale() php function with all the items of the following list:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb895996.aspx

Here is a code sniplet to list all available locales on a Windows based host:

<?php
header( 'Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8' );
// source of the list:
// http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/39cwe7zf(v=vs.90).aspx
$langs = array(
    // language, sublanguage, codes
    array( 'Chinese', 'Chinese', array( 'chinese' ) ),
    array( 'Chinese', 'Chinese (simplified)', array( 'chinese-simplified', 'chs' ) ),
    array( 'Chinese', 'Chinese (traditional)', array( 'chinese-traditional', 'cht' ) ),
    array( 'Czech', 'Czech', array( 'csy', 'czech' ) ),
    array( 'Danish', 'Danish', array( 'dan', 'danish' ) ),
    array( 'Dutch', 'Dutch (default)', array( 'dutch', 'nld' ) ),
    array( 'Dutch', 'Dutch (Belgium)', array( 'belgian', 'dutch-belgian', 'nlb' ) ),
    array( 'English', 'English (default)', array( 'english' ) ),
    array( 'English', 'English (Australia)', array( 'australian', 'ena', 'english-aus' ) ),
    array( 'English', 'English (Canada)', array( 'canadian', 'enc', 'english-can' ) ),
    array( 'English', 'English (New Zealand)', array( 'english-nz', 'enz' ) ),
    array( 'English', 'English (United Kingdom)', array( 'eng', 'english-uk', 'uk' ) ),
    array( 'English', 'English (United States)', array( 'american', 'american english', 'american-english', 'english-american', 'english-us', 'english-usa', 'enu', 'us', 'usa' ) ),
    array( 'Finnish', 'Finnish', array( 'fin', 'finnish' ) ),
    array( 'French', 'French (default)', array( 'fra', 'french' ) ),
    array( 'French', 'French (Belgium)', array( 'frb', 'french-belgian' ) ),
    array( 'French', 'French (Canada)', array( 'frc', 'french-canadian' ) ),
    array( 'French', 'French (Switzerland)', array( 'french-swiss', 'frs' ) ),
    array( 'German', 'German (default)', array( 'deu', 'german' ) ),
    array( 'German', 'German (Austria)', array( 'dea', 'german-austrian' ) ),
    array( 'German', 'German (Switzerland)', array( 'des', 'german-swiss', 'swiss' ) ),
    array( 'Greek', 'Greek', array( 'ell', 'greek' ) ),
    array( 'Hungarian', 'Hungarian', array( 'hun', 'hungarian' ) ),
    array( 'Icelandic', 'Icelandic', array( 'icelandic', 'isl' ) ),
    array( 'Italian', 'Italian (default)', array( 'ita', 'italian' ) ),
    array( 'Italian', 'Italian (Switzerland)', array( 'italian-swiss', 'its' ) ),
    array( 'Japanese', 'Japanese', array( 'japanese', 'jpn' ) ),
    array( 'Korean', 'Korean', array( 'kor', 'korean' ) ),
    array( 'Norwegian', 'Norwegian (default)', array( 'norwegian' ) ),
    array( 'Norwegian', 'Norwegian (Bokmal)', array( 'nor', 'norwegian-bokmal' ) ),
    array( 'Norwegian', 'Norwegian (Nynorsk)', array( 'non', 'norwegian-nynorsk' ) ),
    array( 'Polish', 'Polish', array( 'plk', 'polish' ) ),
    array( 'Portuguese', 'Portuguese (default)', array( 'portuguese', 'ptg' ) ),
    array( 'Portuguese', 'Portuguese (Brazil)', array( 'portuguese-brazilian', 'ptb' ) ),
    array( 'Russian', 'Russian (default)', array( 'rus', 'russian' ) ),
    array( 'Slovak', 'Slovak', array( 'sky', 'slovak' ) ),
    array( 'Spanish', 'Spanish (default)', array( 'esp', 'spanish' ) ),
    array( 'Spanish', 'Spanish (Mexico)', array( 'esm', 'spanish-mexican' ) ),
    array( 'Spanish', 'Spanish (Modern)', array( 'esn', 'spanish-modern' ) ),
    array( 'Swedish', 'Swedish', array( 'sve', 'swedish' ) ),
    array( 'Turkish', 'Turkish', array( 'trk', 'turkish' ) )
);
echo '<table>'."\n";
echo '<tr>'."\n";
echo '  <th>Languange</th>'."\n";
echo '  <th>Sub-Languange</th>'."\n";
echo '  <th>Languange String</th>'."\n";
echo '</tr>'."\n";
foreach ( $langs as $lang ) {
    echo '<tr>'."\n";
    echo '  <td>'.$lang[0].'</td>'."\n";
    echo '  <td>'.$lang[1].'</td>'."\n";
    $a = array();
    foreach ( $lang[2] as $lang_code ) {
        $loc = setlocale( LC_ALL, $lang_code );
        $a []= $lang_code.' '.( false === $loc ? '✖' : '✔ - '.$loc );
    }
    echo '  <td>'.implode( '<br>', $a ).'</td>'."\n";
    echo '</tr>'."\n";
}
echo '</table>'."\n";
// Note: Norvegian (Bokmal) is Norvegian (Bokmål), see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokmål
?>

Answer 5

system("locale -a|grep XX"); where XX is language code ie. system("locale -a|grep de");

Answer 6

This might be a slight deviation from OP, but I feel it is a common enough use-case to be mentioned here. What if you want a list of language code, as defined by ICU, instead of a list of locales ?

List of all languages

The solution based on ResourceBundle::getLocales(''); will get you locales. You then need to map them to language codes. But even after that the list of language is not complete.

Here is a comparison with how to do it properly:

<?php

function getListFromLocales(): array
{
    return array_filter(ResourceBundle::getLocales(''), function ($value) {
        return strpos($value, '_') === false;
    });
}

function getListFromLanguages(): array
{
    $resourceBundle = new ResourceBundle('en', 'ICUDATA-lang', false);
    $languagesBundle = $resourceBundle['Languages'];

    $languages = [];
    foreach ($languagesBundle as $languageCode => $languageName) {
        $languages[] = $languageCode;
    }

    return $languages;
}

function languageForEndUser($language): string
{
    return Locale::getDisplayLanguage($language, $language) . ' (' . Locale::getDisplayLanguage($language) . ')';
}

$list1 = getListFromLocales();
$list2 = getListFromLanguages();

echo 'languages in list1: ' . count($list1) . PHP_EOL;
echo 'languages in list2: ' . count($list2) . PHP_EOL;
echo 'languages that exists in list1, but not in list2: ' . count(array_diff($list1, $list2)) . PHP_EOL;
echo 'languages that exists in list2, but not in list1: ' . count(array_diff($list2, $list1)) . PHP_EOL;

Locale::setDefault('fr'); // Assume end-user speaks french

echo 'examples of language for end-user: ' . PHP_EOL;
echo '    - ' . languageForEndUser('en') . PHP_EOL;
echo '    - ' . languageForEndUser('fr') . PHP_EOL;
echo '    - ' . languageForEndUser('ko') . PHP_EOL;

This will output something similar to:

languages in list1: 204
languages in list2: 620
languages that exists in list1, but not in list2: 0
languages that exists in list2, but not in list1: 416
examples of language for end-user: 
    - English (anglais)
    - français (français)
    - 한국어 (coréen)

where we can see that the proper way yields ~400 (!) more languages.

You can see the code in action on https://3v4l.org/TS292