Transifex Command-line Client v0.3.x¶
Note
This document describes Transifex Client v0.3 (outdated). There are also docs for the latest stable release and the development version.
The Transifex Command-line Client is a command line tool that enables you to easily manage your translations within a project without the need of an elaborate UI system.
You can use the command line client to easily create new resources, map locale files to translations and synchronize your Transifex project with your local repository and vice verca. Translators and localization managers can also use it to handle large volumes of translation files easily and without much hassle.
Getting the client¶
The Transifex Client can be found on the Python Package Index (PYPI) under the name transifex-client. So to install it, make sure you have a recent version of setuptools installed and then issue the following command:
easy_install -U transifex-client
This command will install the latest version of transifex-client and if you have an outdated version it’ll perform an update.
Alternatively, you can get the source code of transifex-client directly from our repository on bitbucket. To clone the repository locally, issue:
git clone git://github.com/transifex/transifex-client.git
To install it on your computer you may run the following:
cd transifex-client
(sudo) python setup.py install
Using the client¶
To make sure that transifex-client was installed correctly, try running it with the following command:
tx --help
If everything was completed, then you should see a brief help message and basic instructions on how to use the tool. You can also view the available commands by running:
tx help
To get more information for each command you can use tx help *command*.
Command list¶
A brief introduction to the most commonly used commands provided by transifex-client follows.
init¶
The tx init command is used to initialize a project.
This is very similar to the way most VCS systems treat the init command. Use this command to create a new project in the current directory. This way you will be able to manage all translation files of the project that exist under the project’s root directory.
Here’s a sample run:
$ tx init
Creating .tx folder...
Transifex instance [http://www.transifex.com]:
Creating skeleton...
Creating config file...
No configuration file found.
No entry found for host http://www.transifex.com. Creating...
Please enter your transifex username: user
Password: <...>
Updating /home/fim/.transifexrc file...
Done.
Where to run init from¶
You may run this command from anywhere on your filesystem. It will basically create a small file which stores the mapping between your local files and Transifex resources.
If you have a software project in VCS and would like to commit this config file, in order to make it available to anyone who clones your repository, run the command in the root directory of your repo.
You might be managing multiple projects and would like a single configuration file. This is common with translators, who use the client to manage their contributions across projects. In this case, you may run this command outside of the git repos.
Note
If you want to automate the project initialization, the init command offers some options to set the default host, username and password so that you can use it with non-interactive scripts. For more info check the help page of the command ('tx help init').
set¶
tx set [options]
This command is an aggregation of all functions needed to initialize and setup a local Tx project either with by using local files or remote files directly from the Transifex server.
auto-remote¶
tx set --auto-remote <url>
The command above can be used to initialize a local project for the remote Project, Release or Resource specified by the url. Then you can pull or push translation files from and to the server as usual. The supported urls are the following:
| Type | URL | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Resource | http://www.transifex.com/projects/p/transifex/resource/txo/ | Set up a single resource. |
| Project | http://www.transifex.com/projects/p/transifex/ | Set up all resources under this project. |
| Release | http://www.transifex.com/projects/p/transifex/r/tx-1_0/ | Set up all resources belonging to this release. |
auto-local¶
tx set --auto-local -r project.resource -s <lang> <expr> [-f file]
This command can be used to automatically initialize a Tx project by using local files. You just have to specify a resource (the format of the resource is project_slug.resource_slug and the project must already exist on the Transifex server), a source language and a file matching expression for the translation files. The expression must contain the '<lang>' keyword denoting where the file paths differentiate per language (eg 'po/<lang>.po'). If your source file doesn’t follow that schema, you can specify a custom path for the source file using the '-f file' option.
Other commands¶
tx set --source -r project.resource -l <lang> <file>
This command simply sets the source file and the source language of a specific resource. It can be used to initialize new resources or update existing ones.
tx set -r project.resource -l <lang> <file>
This command can be used to set individual translation files mapped to a certain language. This is useful when your translation files don’t use a common naming schema and the --auto-local command cannot be used.
status¶
tx status
This is a simple command that displays the existing project configuration in a more human readable format. It lists all resources that have been initialized under the local project and all their associated translation files.
Sample output:
$ tx status
myproject -> default (1 of 1)
Translation Files:
- en: po/smolt.pot (source)
- ar: po/ar.po
- as: po/as.po
- bg: po/bg.po
- bn_IN: po/bn_IN.p
...
push¶
tx push
This command sends local changes to the Transifex server. If you have added new source files, the corresponding resources are created on the Transifex server and if you have new translations those will get pushed as well. This can also be used to update existing source files or translations on the server with new strings.
When pushing source files, Transifex will update the source strings of a resource to match those from the new source file. This operation may result in loss of information, so please pay extra attention when pushing a source file.
Here’s how differences between the old and new source files will be handled:
- New strings will be added.
- Modified strings will be considered new ones and added as well.
- Strings which do not exist in the new source file (including ones which have been modified) will be removed from the database, along with their translations.
Note
By default, Transifex will try to guess when the pushed files are not changed and it will skip them. To force the push operation, you should use the --force option.
pull¶
tx pull
This command updates your local files by pulling the latest translations from the server as well as new translation files that were created in the Transifex UI. By default, this command will check if the modification time of your local files is more recent than that on the Transifex server and will not overwrite newer files. If you want to force the download of specific files, use the --force option.
Managing your project¶
For information regarding projects and what they represent, check the appropriate documentation.
Creating a project¶
Currently, the client doesn’t support creating a project directly from the command line. So, in order to create a project, you need to visit the project creation page and fill out the corresponding form. Once you have created your project, the only thing you need is the project slug, which is part of the project details page URL (usually it is in the following format: http://transifex.com/projects/p/<project_url>/).
Once you have a project created on the Transifex site, go into your project’s root directory and run the tx init command. This will initialize your local project and will create all necessary configuration files. Once this is finished you are ready to go on to the next step....
Managing your translations¶
Automatic setup¶
Transifex-client offers a smart and easy way to automatically setup and track your translation files provided that all of them have a common naming schema. If for example, you have all translation files under a directory structure similar to this:
po/en.po
po/de.po
po/el.po
po/fi.po
po/ar.po
then, you could use an expression to group them together like 'po/<lang>.po.
The transifex-client can keep track of multiple files by using expressions like the one above with the special keyword <lang> denoting where the language code is specified in the file path. So, in order to quickly setup your project, you just issue the following command:
tx set -r <project_slug>.<resource_slug> -s en 'po/<lang>.po'
Even if you’re using separate source files for translations (for example POT based projects) you can specify the source file on the command above using the -f <file> option like this:
tx set -r <project_slug>.<resource_slug> -s en -f <file> 'po/<lang>.po'
After that, you should have your project’s translation files under tx management. The benefits of this approach instead of handling one by one the translation files is that you can add/remove files dynamically without having to edit the configuration files of transifex-client. Also, the file pattern provides an easy way for transifex-client to guess where new translations should be saved when downloaded from the server.
Note
Even if you’re using the automatic way of setting up your project, you can setup specific translation files that don’t match the global expression as exceptions by using the manual way to setup translation files which is described in the next part.
Manual setup¶
In most cases, the automatic setup procedures should cover most scenarios but there are always people who prefer to do it the hard way. The transifex-client offers a way to use static mapping between locales and files which may be what you need if your translation files don’t share a common naming scheme.
So, in order to setup your project, first you need to create a resource with an assigned source file. To do this, you should run the following command:
tx set --source -r <project_slug>.<resource_slug> -l <language> source_file
Note
The resource name cannot contain special characters. The only valid characters are alphanumeric, the hyphen and the underscore.
Once you have created a mapping between a source file and a resource, you should add more translations to this resource. To do this simply run the following for every language:
tx set -r <project_slug>.<resource_slug> -l <language> translation_file
After doing this for all available languages, you can check the existing mapping using the tx status command.
Pull/Push¶
When you’re sure that the mapping is correct, you can push your files to the Transifex server using the tx push command. If it’s the first time pushing a project to Transifex, you should always use the --source flag with the push command in order to push the source file as well which will take care of creating your resource on the Transifex server. On consecutive pushes, you may omit this flag and only include it whenever you want to update the source strings in your resource.
Whenever you’ve done some work in the online translation editor on Transifex and you want to incorporate those changes back into your project, you can simply run tx pull. If you also want to pull new translation files, you can add the '-a|--all' flag to the pull command but you should know that if you haven’t setup your project by using a file expression, you need to move and track the new translation files manually after downloading them.
Note
Depending on the size of the files and the number of languages, this process can take up to several minutes as it requires uploading all files, parsing them, extracting the available strings, and storing them into the database. To avoid misuse of the API, we have some throttling mechanisms in play which should not interfere with your work but just to be safe, whenever uploading or downloading from the Transifex server, if you want a specific resource or language use the -r/--resource and -l/--language options of the push/pull commands to avoid pushing/pulling all of the tracked files.
Configuration files¶
All of the configuration files that the transifex-client is using are simple text files that you can edit by hand. In this section, we will go over the structure of each configuration file so that if you need to edit a file by hand, you’ll know what to look for.
The transifex-client is using two basic configuration files. The first one is .transifexrc and is unique per user. In this file, we store the username and password for every Transifex server that you are using as well as the hostnames.
[http://www.transifex.com]
username = user
token =
password = p@ssw0rd
hostname = http://www.transifex.com
[http://www.transifex.com]
username = user2
token =
password = p@ssw0rd2
hostname = http://www.transifex.com
If you change your password on a Transifex server for example, you should edit this file with the new password. The token variable should be left blank.
Apart from the system-wide .transifexrc, transifex-client uses a per project configuration file to store the project’s details and the file-to-resource mappings. This file is stored in .tx/config of your project’s root directory and has the following outline:
[main]
host = http://www.transifex-server.com
[project_slug.resource_slug]
file_filter = po/<lang>.po
source_file = po/myproj.pot
source_lang = en
trans.fi = translations/fi/LC_MESSAGES/django.po
A quick rundown of the sections and options appearing in the config file follows
[main] section
In this section we have project-wide options such as the default transifex host for all projects. These can be overriden by each project in case it is needed.
[project_slug.resource_slug]
- source_lang: this is the source language of the resource.
- source_file: this points to the source file directly.
- file_filter: here we hold the expression used to identify translation files under the specific project. [not mandatory]
- trans.<lang>: this is used for translation files that don’t follow a common naming schema and the file expression cannot be used to track them. [not mandatory]
- host: in case the project doesn’t use the default Transifex server as specified in the [main] section, it can override it using this option. [not mandatory]
So if you ever need to change the language of a file or correct the file path for a specific translation, you can edit this file directly.
Warning
Transifex does not offer a way to revert your config configuration back after some unsuccessful changes so make sure you backup the original file before editing by hand.
Sample Usage¶
For Developers¶
Let’s assume you are the maintainer of the Transifex project itself, and you want to setup your project to use Transifex for translations. First of all, change into your project’s main directory, such as your VCS directory root. Then, issue the following command:
[user@host:~/transifex]$ tx init
Creating .tx folder...
Transifex instance [http://www.transifex.com]:
Creating skeleton...
Creating config file...
No configuration file found.
No entry found for host http://www.transifex.com. Creating...
Please enter your transifex username: user
Password:
Updating /home/user/.transifexrc file...
Done.
To ask Transifex to detect your files automatically, run the following command:
[user@host:~/transifex]$ tx set --auto-local -r transifex.txo -s en 'po/<lang>.po'
Only printing the commands which will be run if the --execute switch is specified.
tx set --source -r transifex.txo -l en po/en.po
tx set -r transifex.txo -l bal po/bal.po
tx set -r transifex.txo -l bn_IN po/bn_IN.po
tx set -r transifex.txo -l ca po/ca.po
tx set -r transifex.txo -l cs po/cs.po
tx set -r transifex.txo -l da po/da.po
...
Done.
If everything looks good, issue the command again with the --execute switch:
[user@host:~/transifex]$ tx set --auto-local -r transifex.txo -s en 'po/<lang>.po' --execute
Updating source for resource transifex.txo ( en -> po/en.po ).
Setting source file for resource transifex.txo ( en -> po/en.po ).
Updating file expression for resource transifex.txo ( po/<lang>.po ).
Done.
Finally, here’s a sample run with manual mapping of your files:
[user@host:~/transifex]$ tx --traceback set --source -r transifex.txo -l en po/en.po
Setting source file for resource transifex.txo ( en -> po/en.po ).
Done.
[user@host:~/transifex]$ tx --traceback set -r transifex.txo -l el po/el.po
Updating translations for resource transifex.txo ( el -> po/el.po ).
Done.
After that, once your mapping is done you can push or pull freely to the Transifex server. If it’s the first time you’re setting up your project, you should probably push your files to the Transifex server with the following command:
[user@host:~/transifex]$ tx push --source
Pushing translations for resource transifex.txo:
Pushing source file (po/en.po)
Pushing 'el' translation (file: po/el.po).
Pushing 'hu' translation (file: po/hu.po).
Pushing 'zh_TW' translation (file: po/zh_TW.po).
...
Pushing 'te' translations (file: po/te.po)
Pushing 'pl' translations (file: po/pl.po)
Done.
Then, you can visit the Transifex server and view the available translations from the web UI. Let’s say, you translate your project into more languages and just before the new release, you want to update the translations. In that case, this is what you should do:
[user@host:~/transifex]$ tx pull -a
Pulling translations for resource transifex.txo (source:
po/en.po)
New translations found for the following languages: nb, tg, xh
Pulling 'el' translation (file: po/el.po).
Pulling 'hu' translation (file: po/hu.po).
Pulling 'zh_TW' translation (file: po/zh_TW.po).
Pulling 'bn_IN' translation (file: po/bn_IN.po).
...
Pulling 'te' translation (file: po/te.po).
Pulling 'pl' translation (file: po/pl.po).
Pulling new translations for source file po/en.po
-> nb: ./po/nb.po
Done.
Notice the ‘nb’ language: the new translation file is now managed by Transifex, which means that in subsequent pushes/pulls this will be updated as well.
For Translators¶
If you’re a translator, you don’t really care for all the files included in a project but just the actual translation files. To make the workflow for translators easier, transifex-client offers the ability to initialize a local project by getting the translation files of a project directly from the Transifex server instead of the project’s VCS.
So, in order to begin, you must first create a folder and cd into it. Then you run the following commands:
[user@host:~/trans-project]$ tx init
Creating .tx folder...
Transifex instance [http://www.transifex.com]:
Creating skeleton...
Creating config file...
No configuration file found.
No entry found for host http://www.transifex.com. Creating...
Please enter your transifex username: user
Password:
Updating /home/user/.transifexrc file...
Done.
[user@host:~/trans-project]$ tx set --auto-remote http://www.transifex.com/projects/p/transifex/
Auto configuring local project from remote URL...
Getting details for project transifex
2 resources found. Configuring...
Configuring resource txo.
Configuring resource meegotouch.
Done.
Now, you should be ready to pull the translation files for the resources of this project. To do it, simply run the pull command with the -a|--all flag set:
[user@host:~/testpo]$ tx pull -a
Pulling translations for resource transifex.txo (source: None)
New translations found for the following languages: bal, bn_IN, ca, zh_CN,
zh_TW, cs, da, nl, en_GB, et, fr, gl, de, he, hu, id, it, ja, lv, ms, nb, pa,
fa, pl, pt, pt_BR, ro, ru, sr, sk, es, sv, tg, te, uk, xh
Skipping 'el' translation (file: translations/transifex.txo/el.po).
Skipping 'sq' translation (file: translations/transifex.txo/sq.po).
Pulling new translations for source file None
-> bal: ./translations/transifex.txo/bal.po
-> bn_IN: ./translations/transifex.txo/bn_IN.po
...
-> te: ./translations/transifex.txo/te.po
-> uk: ./translations/transifex.txo/uk.po
-> xh: ./translations/transifex.txo/xh.po
Done.
Now you can translate any of these files using your preferred editor and push it back to the server.
Note
The url we used above is a project url which tells transifex-client to configure all available resources under this specific project. Instead of a project url, you can pass a resource or a release url to the tx command and it will auto-setup a specific resource or all resources under the specified release. The workflow is similar in all cases.
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