Use cookie only for user language instead of opening session

Question

I have set number of languages and translations on my site, they work fine. Added language switch control on my page.

Switch language cause setting session token for every [anonymous] user. How can i avoid this and use only cookie for localization? I mean do not use session, but use something like "{language:'en'}" in cookies, handled automatically?

settings.py config has these settings alongside with locale paths and etc.:

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.locale.LocaleMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.SessionAuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',
)

LANGUAGE_COOKIE_NAME = 'language'

Answer 1

You can do that by writing your own middleware that will:

• Create a language cookie if it does not exist already.

• Set the language according to the cookie.

So you can write something like that:

from django.utils import translation


class LanguageCookieMiddleware():

    def process_request(self, request):
        """
        Sets language from the cookie value.
        """
        if request.COOKIES.has_key(COOKIE_NAME):
            language = request.COOKIES.get(COOKIE_NAME)
            # You should add here some code to check teh language
            # variable is safe...
            translation.activate(language)
            request.LANGUAGE_CODE = translation.get_language()

    def process_response(self, request, response):
        """
        Create cookie if not there already.

        Also deactivates language.
        (See http://stackoverflow.com/a/13031239/388835 )
        """

        if not request.COOKIES.has_key(COOKIE_NAME):
            response.set_cookie(HTTP_COOKIE_NAME,
                                function_for_language_code_you_want())
        translation.deactivate()
        return response