Question

What is Lazy loading translations?

Answer 1

The loading of all translation files at once is unnecessary and it may impact the performance too. It will be easy for lazy loading or asynchronously loading the translation files when you use webpack. i.e, You can dynamically load or import language translations using webpack as below,

//i18n-setup.js
import Vue from 'vue'
import VueI18n from 'vue-i18n'
import messages from '@/lang/en'
import axios from 'axios'

Vue.use(VueI18n)

export const i18n = new VueI18n({
  locale: 'en', // set locale
  fallbackLocale: 'en',
  messages // set locale messages
})

const loadedLanguages = ['en'] // our default language that is preloaded

function setI18nLanguage (lang) {
  i18n.locale = lang
  axios.defaults.headers.common['Accept-Language'] = lang
  document.querySelector('html').setAttribute('lang', lang)
  return lang
}

export function loadLanguageAsync (lang) {
  if (i18n.locale !== lang) {
    if (!loadedLanguages.includes(lang)) {
      return import(/* webpackChunkName: "lang-[request]" */ `@/lang/${lang}`).then(msgs => {
        i18n.setLocaleMessage(lang, msgs.default)
        loadedLanguages.push(lang)
        return setI18nLanguage(lang)
      })
    }
    return Promise.resolve(setI18nLanguage(lang))
  }
  return Promise.resolve(lang)
}

After that loadLanguageAsync function can be used inside a vue-router beforeEach hook.

router.beforeEach((to, from, next) => {
  const lang = to.params.lang
  loadLanguageAsync(lang).then(() => next())
})