Constructive I18N

Constructive i18n

Multilingual support at every layer — from database schema to GraphQL API. Three pieces compose together:

• DataI18n — blueprint node creating {table}_translations with per-locale copies of translatable fields
• SearchFullText with lang_column — tsvector search where each row is stemmed in its own language (30+ languages via PostgreSQL built-in configs)
• i18n_module — app-level config for default language, supported languages, and fallback chain
• graphile-i18n — PostGraphile v5 plugin adding localeStrings with Accept-Language negotiation

When to Apply

Use this skill when:

• Making fields translatable with DataI18n
• Adding multilingual full-text search
• Configuring app-level language settings
• Working with Accept-Language content negotiation
• Setting up per-row language stemming for tsvector

DataI18n Blueprint Node

{
  "tables": [{
    "table_name": "articles",
    "nodes": [
      "DataId", "DataTimestamps",
      { "$type": "DataI18n", "data": {
        "fields": ["title", "description"],
        "languages": ["en", "es", "fr", "de"]
      }}
    ],
    "fields": [
      { "name": "title", "type": { "name": "text" }, "is_required": true },
      { "name": "description", "type": { "name": "text" } }
    ]
  }]
}

Creates articles_translations table with language, title, description columns per locale.

Multilingual Search

Compose DataI18n with SearchFullText using lang_column for per-row stemming:

{ "$type": "SearchFullText", "data": {
  "field_name": "search_tsv",
  "lang_column": "language",
  "source_fields": [
    { "field": "title", "weight": "A" },
    { "field": "description", "weight": "B" }
  ]
}}

30+ languages supported out of the box via PostgreSQL text search configurations (english, spanish, french, german, japanese, etc.).

i18n Module

Provisions app_settings_i18n singleton with:

• default_language — fallback language
• supported_languages — array of enabled locales
• fallback_chain — ordered fallback for missing translations

graphile-i18n Plugin

Adds localeStrings computed field to GraphQL types with Accept-Language header negotiation. Returns translations in the requested locale with automatic fallback.

Cross-References

• Search strategies: constructive-search
• Blueprint definitions: constructive-blueprints
• ORM query patterns: constructive-orm