Intlless plugin for CakePHP

Intlless plugin is a plugin for CakePHP 3.x, which allows your application to work relatively well without intl extension.

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Installing CakePHP3

If you don't have intl installed, you might have trouble installing CakePHP3 itself. You can install it with zip file, or with composer by changing configuration.

Installing with zip file

Download a release of CakePHP (cakephp-3-x-y.zip), and extract it. Set suitable permissions on your logs directory, tmp directory and its subdirectories.

Installing with composer

Execute the following command to pretend you have intl extension.

composer config --global platform.ext-intl 0.0.0

After that, you can execute create-project.

composer create-project --prefer-dist cakephp/app my_app_name

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Installing Intlless plugin

After installing CakePHP3, let's install Intlless plugin.

Installing with zip file

Download a release of Intlless plugin (Source code). After extracting it, put it into your plugins directory, as "Intlless".

Installing with git

If you want to install with git, execute the following command in your plugins directory.

git clone https://github.com/chinpei215/cakephp-intlless.git Intlless

Installing with composer

Execute the following command if you have not done it yet.

composer config --global platform.ext-intl 0.0.0

After that, you can install the plugin by the following command.

composer require --prefer-dist chinpei215/cakephp-intlless

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Setting up Intlless plugin

Once you put this plugin, you need to load it in your config/bootstrap.php, but it would be better to do it near the front part of the file as much as possible. Because it is necessary to replace Cake\I18n-namespaced classes before the original classes loaded. Normally, it is best to do it just after loading config/app.php.

try {
    Configure::config('default', new PhpConfig());
    Configure::load('app', 'default', false);
} catch (\Exception $e) {
    exit($e->getMessage() . "\n");
}

//Configure::load('app_local', 'default');

// Here is the best place to load
Plugin::load('Intlless', ['bootstrap' => true, 'autoload' => true]);

Note that the boostrap option and the autoload option are set to true in the above example. Since Intlless plugin needs to execute bootstrapping to replace Cake\I18n-namespaced classes, and if you have installed it with zip, it is necessary to use the autoloading feature of CakePHP.

Even if you have installed it with composer, make sure to set the bootstrap option to true.

In addition, you need to modify some code in your application. First, find a line where an error is thrown if intl extension is not loaded, and comment it out.

if (!extension_loaded('intl')) {
    // Comment out this statement
    // trigger_error('You must enable the intl extension to use CakePHP.', E_USER_ERROR);
}

If useLocaleParser() call is found in your config/bootstrap.php, also comment it out. Intlless plugin doesn't support the feature.

// Comment them out
// Type::build('date')->useLocaleParser();
// Type::build('datetime')->useLocaleParser();

// Comment out only useLocaleParser(), if the statement is like this
Type::build('time')
    ->useImmutable()
    /*->useLocaleParser()*/;

Installation is end with this. You will see your application works relatively well without intl extension.

Limitations

Limitation of messaging functions

__() or other messaging functions cannot parse complex message formats.

echo __('{0}%', 100);  // Prints 100%

echo __('{0,number,#,###}', 100); // Prints {0,number,#,###}

In addition, they don't support any localization features.

Limitation of date and time functions

Cake\I18n\Time will be an alias of Intlless\Time. Intlless\Time is a sub-class of Cake\Chronos\MutableDateTime contained in Chronos, with different constructor. So you cannot call any methods not defined in the parent class, such as i18nFormat(), timeAgoInWords(), nice() and so on.

use Cake\I18n\Time;

$time = new Time('-12 hour');

echo $time->isYesterday(); // Works

echo $time->timeAgoInWords(); // Throws a fatal error

The same can be said about Time helper. In addition, they don't support any localization features.

Cake\I18n\FrozenTime will be an alias of Intlless\FrozenTime. Intlless\FrozenTime is a sub-class of Cake\Chronos\Chronos with different constructor. So you cannot call any methods not defined in the parent class as well.

Cake\I18n\Date and Cake\I18n\FrozenDate will be an alias of Cake\Chronos\MutableDate and Cake\Chronos\Date, respectively.

Note that, CakePHP earlier than version 3.2, Cake\Chronos\MutableTime will be an alias of Carbon instead. Cake\I18n\FrozenTime will be undeclared.

Limitation of number functions

Cake\I18n\Number will be an alias of Intlless\Number. Intlless\Number is a small class that provides the following methods only.

• precision()
• toReadableSize()
• toPercentage()
• format()
• formatDelta() (added in 0.2.0)

You cannot call any other methods not listed in the above.

use Cake\I18n\Number;

echo Number::precision(1.2345, 3); // Prints 1.234

echo Number::currency(1000); // Throws a fatal error

The same can be said about Number helper. In addition, they don't support any localization features.

Other limitations

• You cannot use any other Cake\I18n-namespaced classes.
• You cannot use Cake\ORM\Behavior\TranslateBehavior class.
• You cannot use any functions using intl extension under the hood, such as Cake\Utility\Text::transliterate().