We can detect requesting browser’s language using PHP’s super global variable $_SERVER. It is a superglobal variable which holds information about headers, paths, and script locations. It is basically an associative array in PHP which has keys like SERVER_NAME, SERVER_ADDR, REQUEST_METHOD, etc.
We can use HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE key to get the language of the browser.
Syntax:
$_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE']
We can see an output like:
en-US, en;q=0.9, hi;q=0.8, fr;q=0.7
Example 1:
In order to get the current language of the browser, we can use PHP’s built-in substr function to get the first two letters of the string like-
<?php echo substr($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'], 0, 2); ?> |
After running the above program you’ll see the output as your current browser’s language –
en
You can test it by changing your browser’s language. If you are on chrome you can go to chrome://settings/languages and choose a different language.
Now run the above program again and you’ll see the output as the newly chosen language.
Example 2: If your website has different pages for different languages, you can use this method in order to redirect to the page according to the user’s browser’s language.
<?php $lang = substr($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'], 0, 2); // Redirect browser exit; ?> |
The above program will redirect to links like
http://www.example.com/en/index.php
