Storing translation array in cookie

Question

I save translation text in PHP files like that:

en.php:

$translation = [
    "home" => [
        "title" => "Home",
    ],
    "contact" => [
        "title" => "Contact", 
    ],
];

return json_encode($translation);

I want to save this array in cookie to use it across the website without including it each time the user visits a page.

So in header.php:

if(!isset($_COOKIE['translation']) && !isset($_GET['lang'])){
    $translation = require_once('en.php');
    setcookie('translation', $translation, time()+86400, '/');
    $_COOKIE['translation'] = $translation;
}elseif(isset($_GET['lang'])){
    $translation = require_once($_GET['lang'] . '.php');
    setcookie('translation', $translation, time()+86400, '/');
    $_COOKIE['translation'] = $translation;
}

$decode = json_decode($_COOKIE['translation']);

echo $decode->home->title;

But I'm getting an error This site can’t be reached ERR_INVALID_RESPONSE

Answer 1

Try the following:

Remove return json_encode($translation); in en.php

Then in header.php :

if (! isset($_COOKIE['translation']) && ! isset($_GET['lang'])) {
  require_once('en.php');
  $jsonEncodedTranslation = json_encode($translation);

  setcookie('translation', $jsonEncodedTranslation, time() + 86400, '/');
  $_COOKIE['translation'] = $jsonEncodedTranslation;
} elseif(isset($_GET['lang'])) {
  require_once($_GET['lang'].'.php'); // this looks evil btw
  $jsonEncodedTranslation = json_encode($translation);

  setcookie('translation', $jsonEncodedTranslation, time() + 86400, '/');
  $_COOKIE['translation'] = $jsonEncodedTranslation;
}

$decode = json_decode($_COOKIE['translation']);

echo $decode->home->title;

On a side note, this looks like a poor implementation. Most websites will include a translation file on every page, and that's totally fine because that's probably the fastest solution. You, on the other side, are encode/decoding on every page and forcing the client to send massive http headers (Cookie) on each request.