TYPO3 Core

When thinking about a solution keep in mind that relations to records may be defined on the default language and optionally as well on a translated record. So the selection logic must take care about all those possibilities.

A note on "order by on translated records". This is simply NOT possible to achieve on DB level when overlays are in the game, due to l10n_mode etc.

Thank you for the excellent description of the problem.

There are two quirks with this problem.

First of all, when Kasper designed localisation model for TYPO3, it was always default language + translation. It was described in the Frontend Localisation Guide and every localisation-related code in TYPO3 followed it strictly. It worked well with the exception of sorting. If records had to be sorted by a translated field, than it did not work, because sorting happened only when the default language was fetched. This was always broken. I guess Kasper just did not see such use case.

Secondly, it seems that somebody decided to break this model. Whether it was conscious decision or that somebody just did not read the Frontend Localisation Guide, I do not know. In any case, TYPO3 got an option to add records in other languages without any relation to the parent record in the default language. Sometimes it is useful but it broke TYPO3 localisation completely. If people want to use such model, they should still use a record in the default language but hide it or make it empty (in case of tt_content). This already works with Kasper's model.

Now Extbase tried to work with both ways and it fails because these two ways are incompatible.

1. What to do with records that exist in non-default language only?
2. Sorting of records using translated fields (like translated titles)?

1. Add a special option in query settings that will specially enable such behavior.
2. If the field has l10n_mode set in $TCA, a default language record had to be fetched in some cases and proper overlays made.

This is quite complicated and slow.

For the second problem we may need some joins and more complex logic in Extbase. Again, l10n_mode can be a problem here.

There is no easy solution. I would even set the complexity to "nightmare" instead of "hard".

I am willing to be in a task force group for this. I may not have much time for coding (it depends on the amount of work I have at my daily job) but I would be happy to discuss, review and test the code after I am back from vacation.

I would fiully agree with the change at https://review.typo3.org/#/c/10188/ for now. But I would like to improve in other commits as described above.

When using sys_language_mode=strict then the killer part looks like this:

AND (
    -- language set to all languages
    tx_news_domain_model_news.sys_language_uid = -1

    -- all translated records but without a language parent
    OR (
        tx_news_domain_model_news.sys_language_uid = 1 AND tx_news_domain_model_news.l10n_parent = 0

    -- records in the default language that have translations
    ) OR (
        tx_news_domain_model_news.sys_language_uid = 0 AND tx_news_domain_model_news.uid IN(
            SELECT tx_news_domain_model_news.l10n_parent
            FROM tx_news_domain_model_news
            WHERE tx_news_domain_model_news.l10n_parent > 0 AND tx_news_domain_model_news.sys_language_uid = 1 AND tx_news_domain_model_news.deleted = 0
        )
    )
)

That makes it impossible to search e.g. for a title of a properly translated news record because you either search records that have their language set to all, that have no language parent or are in the default language. I created a very limited fix for that issue, the fix does only work if all the fields that you want to search are explicitly set on the translated record: https://gist.github.com/maechler/258f06f170c7138500e1a3c4a9b12725

Markus Mächler wrote:

That makes it impossible to search e.g. for a title of a properly translated news record because you either search records that have their language set to all, that have no language parent or are in the default language. I created a very limited fix for that issue, the fix does only work if all the fields that you want to search are explicitly set on the translated record: https://gist.github.com/maechler/258f06f170c7138500e1a3c4a9b12725

Hi Markus,

I think your message is not fully correct. The part `WHERE tx_news_domain_model_news.l10n_parent > 0 AND tx_news_domain_model_news.sys_language_uid = 1 AND tx_news_domain_model_news.deleted = 0` searches all entries in the current language (in your case sys_language_uid 1) that are translated. I don't see any issue here. This makes it perfectly working for your case: search by title in translated records.

Am I wrong?

Edit: I overlooked the outer condition. Indeed this needs to be removed to fetch correct results.
See https://review.typo3.org/37039/