Support

September 21, 2020 at 9:09 am

Hi Mark,

It’s not gettext that is providing those string replacements, its sprintf() but again, its not the function itself that support specific strings, it’s whatever is passed into the function as part of the call.

To explain a little better, here’s an example I’ve just pulled from EE’s codebase:

sprintf(
    esc_html__(
        '%sStep 1%s: Visit your %sOrganization Settings%s and add/update your details.',
        'event_espresso'
    ),
    '<strong>',
    '</strong>',
    '<a href="admin.php?page=espresso_general_settings">',
    '</a>'
)

The only thing there that is passed to gettext is %sStep 1%s: Visit your %sOrganization Settings%s and add/update your details. it doesn’t know what the %s or other places holders are for, just that they are there.

Then sprint off parses the string and replaces the placesholders for the the strings (we use HTML but it doesn’t need to be) in the order the places holders are in the string (or you can define the order yourself).

So in this example, the first placeholder is %s before ‘Step 1’ then the second is again %s right after it.

The 1st string passed to sprintf is <strong>, and the second is </strong> meaning it changes that to be <strong>Step 1</strong> and so on.

This is basically an easier way to allow translations to include HTML in the string without translations breaking the HTML itself.

—

So to answer your question:

At a minimum can you tell me what codes I need to insert for these OR give me a complete list of the codes that gettext supports?

No, because that’s no how it works.

If you have a string that already has those strings passed into it in a different order than you want you can use them in different locations within the string but you can’t pass anything into the string itself to automatically create them, unless you add the HTML tags into the string itself.

Which specific string is this?

September 21, 2020 at 12:47 pm

So if you search for that original string in the codebase you’ll get:

echo apply_filters(
    'FHEE__registration_page_attendee_information__attendee_information_pg',
    sprintf(
        __(
            'In order to process your registration, we ask you to provide the following information.%1$sPlease note that all fields marked with an asterisk (%2$s) are required.',
            'event_espresso'
        ),
        '<br />',
        '<span class="asterisk">*</span>'
    )
);

The first additional parameter passed to sprintf() is <br/> so you can use %1$s as a placeholder for <br/>, then for the strong tags you’ll need to include them yourself, so something like:

'In order to initiate a profile, please complete all of the fields below.%1$s%1$s<strong>Refer to the instructions in Success Factors for the code. The code is CaSe SeNsItIvE.</strong>'

Note the above is untested.