Intl MessageFormat

Formats ICU Message strings with number, date, plural, and select placeholders to create localized messages.

Overview

Goals

This package aims to provide a way for you to manage and format your JavaScript app's string messages into localized strings for people using your app. You can use this package in the browser and on the server via Node.js.

This implementation is based on the Strawman proposal, but there are a few places this implementation diverges.

Future Changes

This IntlMessageFormat API may change to stay in sync with ECMA-402, but this package will follow semver.

How It Works

Messages are provided into the constructor as a String message, or a pre-parsed AST object.

const msg = new IntlMessageFormat(message, locales, [formats], [opts])

The string message is parsed, then stored internally in a compiled form that is optimized for the format() method to produce the formatted string for displaying to the user.

const output = msg.format(values)

Common Usage Example

A very common example is formatting messages that have numbers with plural labels. With this package you can make sure that the string is properly formatted for a person's locale, e.g.:

Live Editor

new IntlMessageFormat(
  `{numPhotos, plural,
      =0 {You have no photos.}
      =1 {You have one photo.}
      other {You have # photos.}
    }`,
  'en-US'
).format({numPhotos: 1000})

Result

Live Editor

new IntlMessageFormat(
  `{numPhotos, plural,
      =0 {Usted no tiene fotos.}
      =1 {Usted tiene una foto.}
      other {Usted tiene # fotos.}
    }`,
  'es-ES'
).format({numPhotos: 1000})

Result

Message Syntax

The message syntax that this package uses is not proprietary, in fact it's a common standard message syntax that works across programming languages and one that professional translators are familiar with. This package uses the ICU Message syntax and works for all CLDR languages which have pluralization rules defined.

Features

• Uses industry standards: ICU Message syntax and CLDR locale data.

• Supports plural, select, and selectordinal message arguments.

• Formats numbers and dates/times in messages using Intl.NumberFormat and Intl.DateTimeFormat, respectively.

• Optimized for repeated calls to an IntlMessageFormat instance's format() method.

• Supports defining custom format styles/options.

• Supports escape sequences for message syntax chars, e.g.: "'{foo}'" will output: "{foo}" in the formatted output instead of interpreting it as a foo argument.

Usage

Modern Intl Dependency

This package assumes that the Intl global object exists in the runtime. Intl is present in all modern browsers (IE11+) and Node (with full ICU). The Intl methods we rely on are:

1. Intl.NumberFormat for number formatting (can be polyfilled using @formatjs/intl-numberformat)
2. Intl.DateTimeFormat for date time formatting (can be polyfilled using @formatjs/intl-datetimeformat)
3. Intl.PluralRules for plural/ordinal formatting (can be polyfilled using @formatjs/intl-pluralrules)

Loading Intl MessageFormat in a browser

<script src="intl-messageformat/intl-messageformat.min.js"></script>

Loading Intl MessageFormat in Node.js

Either do:

import IntlMessageFormat from 'intl-messageformat'

const IntlMessageFormat = require('intl-messageformat').default

NOTE: Your Node has to include full ICU

Public API

IntlMessageFormat Constructor

To create a message to format, use the IntlMessageFormat constructor. The constructor takes three parameters:

• message: string | AST - String message (or pre-parsed AST) that serves as formatting pattern.

• locales: string | string[] - A string with a BCP 47 language tag, or an array of such strings. If you do not provide a locale, the default locale will be used. When an array of locales is provided, each item and its ancestor locales are checked and the first one with registered locale data is returned. See: Locale Resolution for more details.

• formats?: object - Optional object with user defined options for format styles.

• opts?: { formatters?: Formatters, ignoreTag?: boolean } - Optional options.

  • formatters: Map containing memoized formatters for performance.
  • ignoreTag: Whether to treat HTML/XML tags as string literal instead of parsing them as tag token. When this is false we only allow simple tags without any attributes

const msg = new IntlMessageFormat('My name is {name}.', 'en-US')

Locale Resolution

IntlMessageFormat uses Intl.NumberFormat.supportedLocalesOf() to determine which locale data to use based on the locales value passed to the constructor. The result of this resolution process can be determined by call the resolvedOptions() prototype method.

resolvedOptions() Method

This method returns an object with the options values that were resolved during instance creation. It currently only contains a locale property; here's an example:

Live Editor

new IntlMessageFormat('', 'en-us').resolvedOptions().locale

Result

Notice how the specified locale was the all lower-case value: "en-us", but it was resolved and normalized to: "en-US".

format(values) Method

Once the message is created, formatting the message is done by calling the format() method on the instance and passing a collection of values:

Live Editor

new IntlMessageFormat('My name is {name}.', 'en-US').format({name: 'Eric'})

Result

placeholders

A value must be supplied for every argument in the message pattern the instance was constructed with.

Rich Text support

Live Editor

new IntlMessageFormat('hello <b>world</b>', 'en').format({
  b: chunks => <strong>{chunks}</strong>,
})

Result

We support embedded XML tag in the message, e.g this is a <b>strong</b> tag. This is not meant to be a full-fledged method to embed HTML, but rather to tag specific text chunk so translation can be more contextual. Therefore, the following restrictions apply:

1. Any attributes on the HTML tag are also ignored.
2. Self-closing tags are treated as string literal and not supported, please use regular ICU placeholder like {placeholder}.
3. All tags specified must have corresponding values and will throw error if it's missing, e.g:

Live Editor

function () {
  try {
    return new IntlMessageFormat('a <foo>strong</foo>').format()
  } catch (e) {
    return String(e)
  }
}

Result

4. XML/HTML tags are escaped using apostrophe just like other ICU constructs. In order to escape you can do things like:

Live Editor

new IntlMessageFormat("I '<'3 cats").format()

Result

Live Editor

new IntlMessageFormat("raw '<b>HTML</b>'").format()

Result

Live Editor

new IntlMessageFormat("raw '<b>HTML</b>' with '<a>'{placeholder}'</a>'").format(
  {placeholder: 'some word'}
)

Result

5. Embedded valid HTML tag is a bit of a grey area right now since we're not supporting the full HTML/XHTML/XML spec.

getAst Method

Return the underlying AST for the compiled message.

Date/Time/Number Skeleton

We support ICU Number skeleton and a subset of Date/Time Skeleton for further customization of formats.

Number Skeleton

Example:

Live Editor

new IntlMessageFormat(
  'The price is: {price, number, ::currency/EUR}',
  'en-GB'
).format({price: 100})

Result

A full set of options and syntax can be found here

Date/Time Skeleton

ICU provides a wide array of pattern to customize date time format. However, not all of them are available via ECMA402's Intl API. Therefore, our parser only support the following patterns

Symbol	Meaning	Notes
G	Era designator
y	year
M	month in year
L	stand-alone month in year
d	day in month
E	day of week
e	local day of week	e..eee is not supported
c	stand-alone local day of week	c..ccc is not supported
a	AM/PM marker
h	Hour [1-12]
H	Hour [0-23]
K	Hour [0-11]
k	Hour [1-24]
m	Minute
s	Second
z	Time Zone

Example:

Live Editor

new IntlMessageFormat('Today is: {now, date, ::yyyyMMdd}', 'en-GB').format({
  now: new Date(),
})

Result

Advanced Usage

Passing in AST

You can pass in pre-parsed AST to IntlMessageFormat like this:

new IntlMessageFormat('hello').format() // prints out hello

// is equivalent to

import IntlMessageFormat from 'intl-messageformat'
import {parse} from '@formatjs/icu-messageformat-parser'
new IntlMessageFormat(parse('hello')).format() // prints out hello

This helps performance for cases like SSR or preload/precompilation-supported platforms since AST can be cached.

If your messages are all in ASTs, you can alias @formatjs/icu-messageformat-parser to {default: undefined} to save some bytes during bundling.

Formatters

For complex messages, initializing Intl.* constructors can be expensive. Therefore, we allow user to pass in formatters to provide memoized instances of these Intl objects. This opts combines with passing in AST and fast-memoize can speed things up by 30x per the benchmark down below.

For example:

import IntlMessageFormat from 'intl-messageformat'
import {memoize} from '@formatjs/fast-memoize'
const formatters = {
  getNumberFormat: memoize(
    (locale, opts) => new Intl.NumberFormat(locale, opts)
  ),
  getDateTimeFormat: memoize(
    (locale, opts) => new Intl.DateTimeFormat(locale, opts)
  ),
  getPluralRules: memoize((locale, opts) => new Intl.PluralRules(locale, opts)),
}
new IntlMessageFormat('hello {number, number}', 'en', undefined, {
  formatters,
}).format({number: 3}) // prints out `hello, 3`

Benchmark

format_cached_complex_msg x 153,868 ops/sec ±1.13% (85 runs sampled)
format_cached_string_msg x 21,661,621 ops/sec ±4.06% (84 runs sampled)
new_complex_msg_preparsed x 719,056 ops/sec ±2.83% (78 runs sampled)
new_complex_msg x 12,844 ops/sec ±1.97% (85 runs sampled)
new_string_msg x 409,770 ops/sec ±2.57% (79 runs sampled)
complex msg format x 12,065 ops/sec ±1.66% (81 runs sampled)
complex msg w/ formatters format x 11,649 ops/sec ±2.05% (78 runs sampled)
complex preparsed msg w/ formatters format x 597,153 ops/sec ±1.46% (90 runs sampled)
complex preparsed msg w/ new formatters format x 684,263 ops/sec ±1.37% (89 runs sampled)