Use object cloning to duplicate a locale object exactly and efficiently. Most locale-aware methods also accept string representations of locales, such as the result of $locale->toString().

<?php
require_once 'Zend/Locale.php';

$locale = new Zend_Locale('ar');

// Save the $locale object as a serialization
$serializedLocale = $locale->serialize();
// re-create the original object
$localeObject = unserialize($serializedLocale);

// Obtain a string identification of the locale
$stringLocale = $locale->toString();

// Make a cloned copy of the $local object
$copiedLocale = clone $locale;

print "copied: ", $copiedLocale->toString();
print "copied: ", $copiedLocale; // PHP automatically calls toString() via __toString();
?>

Zend_Locale also provides a convenience function to compare two locales. All locale-aware classes should provide a similar equality check.

<?php
require_once 'Zend/Locale.php';

$locale = new Zend_Locale();
$mylocale = new Zend_Locale('en_US');

// Check if locales are equal
if ($locale->isEqual($mylocale) { 
    print "Locales are equal";
}
?>

The method getDefault() returns an array of relevant locales using information from the user's web browser (if available), information from the environment of the host server, and ZF settings. As with the constructor for Zend_Locale, the first parameter selects a preference of which information to consider (BROWSER, ENVIRONMENT, or FRAMEWORK) first. The second parameter toggles between returning all matching locales or only the first/best match. Locale-aware components normally use only the first locale. A quality rating is included, when avaiable.

<?php
require_once 'Zend/Locale.php';

$locale = new Zend_Locale();

// Return all default locales
$found = $locale->getDefault();
print_r($found);

// Return only browser locales
$found2 = $locale->getDefault(Zend_Locale::BROWSER,TRUE);
print_r($found2);
?>

To obtain only the default locales relevent to the BROWSER, ENVIRONMENT, or FRAMEWORK , use the corresponding method:

A new locale can be set with the function setLocale(). This function takes a locale string as parameter. If no locale is given, a locale is automatically selected . Since Zend_Locale objects are "light", this method exists primarily to cause side-effects for code that have references to the existing instance object.

<?php
require_once 'Zend/Locale.php';

$locale = new Zend_Locale();

// Actual locale
print $locale->toString();

// new locale
$locale->setLocale('aa_DJ');
print $locale->toString();
?>

Use getLanguage() to obtain a string containing the two character language code from the string locale identifier. Use getRegion() to obtain a string containing the two character region code from the string locale identifier.

getTranslationList() gives you access to localized informations of several types. These information are usefull if you want to display localized data to a customer without the need of translating it. They are already avaiable for your useage.

You can receive this informations for all languages. But not all of the informations are completly avaiable for all languages. Some of these types are also avaiable through an own function for simplicity. See this list for detailed informations.

If you are in need of a single translated value, then you can use getTranslation() instead of getTranslationList(). It returns a single string or an array depending on if the result can have multiple values (f.e. language_detail because a language is spoken in more than one country), or only one value (f.e. language because a language always has only one translated name for it). Both functions accept a type from the list above. As a convenience functions, the following have simple equivalents using the two functions above:

<?php
getCountryTranslation($what, $locale = null)
getCountryTranslationList($locale = null)
getLanguageTranslation($what, $locale = null)
getLanguageTranslationList($locale = null)
getScriptTranslation($what, $locale = null)
getScriptTranslationList($locale = null)
getTerritoryTranslation($what, $locale = null)
getTerritoryTranslationList($locale = null)
?>

The example below demonstrates how to obtain the names of things in different languages.

<?php
require_once 'Zend/Locale.php';

$locale = new Zend_Locale('en_US');
// prints the names of all countries in German language
print_r($locale->getTranslationList('country', 'de'));
?>

The next example shows how to find the name of a language in another language, when the two letter CLDR country code is not known.

<?php
require 'Zend/Locale.php';
$locale = new Zend_Locale('en_US');
$code2name = $locale->getLanguageTranslationList();
$name2code = array_flip($code2name);
$frenchCode = $name2code['French'];
echo $locale->getLanguageTranslation($frenchCode, 'de_AT');
// output is the German name of the French language
?>

To gain some familiarity with what is available, try the example and examine the output.

<?php
// obtain a list of all the translation lists
$lists = $locale->getTranslationList();

// show all translation lists available (lots of output, all in English language)
foreach ($lists as $list) {
    echo "List $list = ";
    print_r($locale->getTranslationList($list));
}
?>

To generate a list of all languages known by Zend_Locale, with each language name shown in its own language, try the example below in a web page. Similarly, getCountryTranslationList() and getRegionDisplay() could be used to create a table mapping your native language names for regions to the names of the regions shown in another language. Likewise, getCalendarTranslationList() and getCalendarDisplay() work identically. Use a try .. catch block to handle exceptions that occur when using a locale that does not exist. Not all languages are also locales. In the example, below exceptions are ignored to prevent early termination.

<?php
require_once 'Zend/Locale.php';

$sourceLanguage = null; // set to your native language code
$locale = new Zend_Locale($sourceLanguage);
$list = $locale->getLanguageTranslationList();

foreach($list as $language => $content) {
    try {
        $output = $locale->getLanguageDisplay($language, $language);
        if (is_string($output)) {
            print "\n<br>[".$language."] ".$output;
        }
    } catch (Exception $e) {
        continue;
    }
}
?>

Frequently, programs need to solicit a "yes" or "no" response from the user. Use getQuestion() to obtain an array containing the correct word(s) or regex strings to use for prompting the user in a particular $locale (defaults to the current object's locale). The array will contain six key-value pairs, for "yes", "no", their abbreviations, and regex string for proper parsing as shown in the example below.

<?php
require_once 'Zend/Locale.php';

$locale = new Zend_Locale();

// Question strings
print_r($locale->getQuestion('de'));

- - - Output - - -

Array
(
    [yes]ja[/yes]
    [no]nein[/no]
    [yesabbr]j[/yesabbr]
    [noabbr]n[/noabbr]
    [yesexpr]^([yY]([eE][sS])?)|([jJ][aA]?)[/yesexpr]
    [noexpr]^([nN]([oO]|([eE][iI][nN]))?)[/noexpr]
)
?>