CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

This is partially linked to my previous post about localizing the installer (http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,35749.0.html), but is a separate issue:

When we install CiviCRM, we can "pre-seed" the configurations for a given language. This localizes specific configurations such as individual prefixes, suffixes, location types, genders, phone types, various profiles, etc.

However, one great annoyance of installing CiviCRM repeatedly is that, while we have pre-seeded most of these configurations, CiviCRM still defaults some configurations such as:

- default language: English
- default currency: USD
- default currency format: %c %a ($ 123)
- default date/time formats, country, province, etc.

There are ways to go around this by using customs extensions, for example, based on https://github.com/eileenmcnaughton/eu.tttp.setting. However, there is no official or unofficial way at the moment. Extensions are great for people who are familiar with CiviCRM, but for new users, especially non-English native people, it is a huge barrier.

So I was thinking of this:

- currently the defaults are set in CRM/Core/Config/Variables.php
- we could have per-language files in CRM/Core/Config/Variables/xx_YY.php
- it would be a PHP file returning an array that can be used by civicrm_api3('Setting', 'create', $params).
- invite translators to send us their defaults (it shouldn't change often, so not a big deal?)

During installation, if there was a language selected, check if CRM/Core/Config/Variables/xx_YY.php exists, and execute civicrm_api3('Setting', 'create', $params).

There's a catch: to use the API (or DAO in general), the CMS needs to be initialized (bootstrapped). In my tests, I only managed to get it to work with Drupal.