Translating Custom BBCode Buttons

Recently, in a support request on phpbb.com the question came up, if it’s also possible, in the situation that you have a multi-lingual board, that custom BBCode-buttons could also have a localized button label and tooltip. While phpBB3 by itself doesn’t really support this out of the box, it’s not all that hard to get it working.

---

Note: Use the code presented here at your own risk. It was only shortly tested on my local devboard. Also don’t forget to backup your files before applying these changes.

The core to this whole task is the display_custom_bbcode() function inside the {$phpbb_root_path}/includes/functions_display.php since this is where phpBB3 fetches the custom BBCode from the database and generates the respective template variables.

Of primary interest within this function is following section (L823 - L834)

while ($row = $db->sql_fetchrow($result))
{
	$template->assign_block_vars('custom_tags', array(
		'BBCODE_NAME'		=> "'[{$row['bbcode_tag']}]', '[/" . str_replace('=', '', $row['bbcode_tag']) . "]'",
		'BBCODE_ID'			=> $num_predefined_bbcodes + ($i * 2),
		'BBCODE_TAG'		=> $row['bbcode_tag'],
		'BBCODE_HELPLINE'	=> $row['bbcode_helpline'],
		'A_BBCODE_HELPLINE'	=> str_replace(array('&amp;', '&quot;', "'", '&lt;', '&gt;'), array('&', '"', "\'", '<', '>'), $row['bbcode_helpline']),
	));

	$i++;
}

This is the place were we want to get the multilanguage support in. Here we will have to replace the values for BBCODE_TAG, BBCODE_HELPLINE and A_BBCODE_HELPLINE. The idea is to take entries from the {$phpbb_root_path}/language/*/posting.php for these fields and fall back to the original value (as set in the ACP) if it isn’t present in the currently selected language pack.

The resulting code looks like this:

while ($row = $db->sql_fetchrow($result))
{
    // Fetch a translation for the custom bbcode if it exists
    $helpline = $row['bbcode_helpline'];
    $helpline_idx = 'CUSTOM_BBCODE_HELP_' . $row['bbcode_tag'];
    $tag_idx = 'CUSTOM_BBCODE_TAG_' . $row['bbcode_tag'];
    
    if (isset($user->lang[$helpline_idx]))
    {
        $helpline = $user->lang[$helpline_idx];
    }
    if (isset($user->lang[$tag_idx]))
    {
        $tag = $user->lang[$tag_idx];
    }
    
	$template->assign_block_vars('custom_tags', array(
		'BBCODE_NAME'		=> "'[{$row['bbcode_tag']}]', '[/" . str_replace('=', '', $row['bbcode_tag']) . "]'",
		'BBCODE_ID'			=> $num_predefined_bbcodes + ($i * 2),
		'BBCODE_TAG'		=> $tag,
		'BBCODE_HELPLINE'	=> $helpline,
		'A_BBCODE_HELPLINE'	=> str_replace(array('&amp;', '&quot;', "'", '&lt;', '&gt;'), array('&', '"', "\'", '<', '>'), $helpline),
	));

	$i++;
}

Since we want to access the language files, we also will have to import the global $user variable in L811 which means replacing

global $db, $template;

with

global $db, $template, $user;

within the same function.

When you now add a new custom BBCode – let’s call it “lala” here – and you want it’s button to show something different depending on what language is selected, simply add something like this to your language definitions in the {$phpbb_root_path}/language/*/posting.php:

'CUSTOM_BBCODE_TAG_lala' => 'LALA button',
'CUSTOM_BBCODE_HELP_lala' => 'Yet another useless button tooltip',

The CUSTOM_BBCODE_TAG_* entry defines the label of the button while the CUSTOM_BBCODE_HELP_* entry sets the tooltip. If you don’t set them for a language, the text you entered while creating the custom BBCode in the admin panel will be used.