react-intl-webpack-plugin

This plugin helps when using react-intl for internationalization of react apps.

Workflow

1. Use <FormattedMessage id="newItem" defaultMessage="Add item" /> for adding text in your react components.
2. Use the babel plugin babel-plugin-react-intl to extract them from your source code.
3. Use react-intl-webpack-plugin to combine them into one message file called reactIntlMessages.json and put this file into the webpack output path.
4. Use CAT (Computer Aided Translation) tools (like the cloud based memsource.com or okapi) to translate this file into the translated file. These tools use a concept called Translation Memory (TM) . This is a separate file where all translations are stored and with this file all translations can be reapplied to a newly generated reactIntlMessages.json file.
5. Save the TM file and the translated json file in a separate directory of your source code.
6. Use reactIntlJson-loader to load the translated files and convert them to messages.

Installation

npm install react-intl-webpack-plugin --save-dev

webpack.config.js:

• add the plugin

var ReactIntlPlugin=require('react-intl-webpack-plugin');
...
plugins: [
         ...
          new ReactIntlPlugin()
         ],

• modify your babel-loader to contain the metadataSubscribers option

module: {
        loaders: [
                  ...
            {
                test: /\.js?$/, loader: 'babel-loader',
                query: {
                    "cacheDirectory": true,
                    "metadataSubscribers":[ReactIntlPlugin.metadataContextFunctionName],
                    "plugins": ["transform-runtime",
                        ["react-intl", {
                            "enforceDescriptions": false
                        }]],
                    "presets": ['react', "es2015", "stage-1"]
                }
            },

• the generated file is called reactIntlMessages.json

Options

You can pass a hash of configuration options to react-intl-webpack-plugin. Allowed values are as follows:

Name	Type	Default	Description
filename	{String}	./reactIntlMessages.json	The output filename

Notes

• Keep in mind that as long as you use webpack-dev-server all assets are generated in memory. To access those assets use either:

  • the browser an check http://localhost:devServerPort/reactIntlMessages.json
  • or, add a script to package.json like "trans:refreshJsonDEV": "curl localhost:3100/reactIntlMessages.json >./dist/reactIntlMessages.json"
  • or start your webpack build to generate the assets into the build directory.

• If no messages are generated it could be helpful to cleanup the cacheDirectory of the babel-loader, or set "cacheDirectory": false temporarily

License

MIT (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php)