Query7 » tutorial

Working with Google’s Language API

admin — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 11:28:42 +0000

Google translate is used by millions of people every day. Combine this with the easy reporting of language errors/mistakes makes it one of the most comprehensive and accurate online translators. Google provides an easy to use API to access their large language database, we’ll be using that today.

It will consist of two textareas, two dropdowns and one button. It will look something like this:

HTML

The HTML code is fairly straight foward. Notice the dropdown menus have values. These are essential as this is the language code, it’s sent to Google.



Translate
From:


To:

We’ll start by including Google’s Language API and jQuery. We can’t link directly to a language.js file, instead we need to use Google’s own load function. jQuery will also be included this way.


google.load("language", "1");
google.load("jquery", "1.3.2");

We need to use jQuery to get 3 values. The textarea containing the words they want translated, the language it is currently in and the language they want it translated into. We only want to capture these when the user clicks the translate button so we wrap it in the click event.

    $(document).ready(function(){

		    $("#translate").click(function(){

		        var from = $("#from").val();
			var to = $("#to").val();

			var orig = $("#or").val();

			    });

	});

Now we need to use Google’s translate function. It takes several parameters – the text we want translated (orig), the language the text was in (from) and the language we want it translated to (to). We capture the information google sends back to is in result. If there are no errors then we set the textarea to the translated text.

google.language.translate(orig, from, to, function(result) {

	if(!result.error)
	{

		$("#tr").val(result.translation);

	}

	});

If you have any questions or comments feel free to post them below.

phpbb2 being pulled

admin — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:42:01 +0000

The popular discussion board phpbb2 is being pulled/development dropped. Security patches and support will be given until January 2009 and you will be able to download the software from the website until the 1st of Ocbober 2008 . phpBB2 has been plagued by a large number of vulnerabilities, a significant number of them were through user submitted modifications.

phpBB 3 started strong and is continuing to do so. With more database types being support, and a massive new set of administrator controls, it’s set up to compete with the likes of MyBB and Simple Machine Forums. People often look back at this thread, posted when phpBB 1 was undergoing testing.

Tune Into Shoutcasts With VLC

admin — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:50:51 +0000

Heres a quick tutorial on how to stream internet radio, in particular shoutcast, through VLC media player. Most people stream through Windows Media Player or Winamp, but if you like Open Source applications like me, heres how you do it.

File -> Open Network Stream

Select the HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/MMS box and in the form, enter the URL of the shoutcast server, with the port. In my case its enaxi.com:8000 . Then click OK.

And tadah.. It works!