Using I18n sidecar assets outside the component

[coorasse]

I recently refactored my ViewComponents to use sidecar YML files for translations.
This helped us keep our components more organised and tidy, without polluting the main YML file.
The main issue we faced was in system tests. Our system tests need to use such translations to "click_on" stuff.
Our code looked like:

click_on I18n.t('my_component.button_text')

Now that button_text is defined within a sidecar YML file, this is not possible anymore.
We wrote a small function to add these translations when needed:

def load_component_translations(component_name)
  translations = YAML.load_file(Rails.root.join("app/components/#{component_name}.yml"))
  locale = translations.keys.first
  I18n.backend.store_translations(locale.to_sym, { component_name => translations[locale] })
end

we can now execute load_component_translations('my_component') and we have the key we are looking for.

Is this a great idea or we are just missing something?

[joelhawksley]

@coorasse I'm not sure if this is exactly what would work, but perhaps we could do something like click_on MyComponent.t('.button_text'). What do you think @elia?

[joelhawksley]

@elia sounds like something we could provide a convenience method for! What API would you suggest?

[elia]

We could try to move the translate and t (along with their helpers) from the instance to the class and have the instance delegate. It would still require prior compilation and we would have an extra level of indirection when calling from the instance (performance wise) but would hopefully be acceptable.

So the above example would become

MyComponent.compile
MyComponent.translate ".my_translation"

@coorasse would you like to give it a crack?
Otherwise happy to take it up myself 🙌

[joelhawksley]

@elia I think that API looks nice to me. I don't think it's unreasonable to depend on compilation. It would be nice to measure the cost of indirection, but I think that conceptually this makes sense to be at the class-level, as it is the same for all instances of a component.

[elia]

I'll send a PR, should be a quick change 😊

[elia]

#1656 reviews appreciated 🙏