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International Address Formatting

3 posts · Oct 2018 – Mar 2023

What this trail covers

Shopify has evolved its capabilities for handling international address formatting. This includes developing a database of country-specific address formats, implementing dynamic form representation based on country selection, and creating a display representation that accounts for locale. An API endpoint provides synchronized data across applications, and abstraction libraries like '@shopify/address' simplify developer integration. Future work includes caching solutions to prevent network calls. This post details the initial efforts in internationalizing the platform, including addressing gendered languages, pluralization rules, hardcoded strings, character set limitations (MySQL utf8), and the development of a translation platform to automate the process of requesting and integrating translations.

All Shopify trails
  1. Lessons From Linguistics: i18n Best Practices for Front-End Developers - ShopifyThis post details lessons learned from linguistics for front-end developers regarding internationalization (i18n). It highlights common pitfalls in translating English-centric code, such as incorrect handling of punctuation, word order, pluralization rules (including zero, singular, dual, paucal, and other forms), gendered nouns and their impact on articles and adjectives, and complex declension systems. It uses examples like the 'Added:' date string and a status bar component to illustrate these challenges. The post advocates for a holistic approach to translation that considers the grammatical structure of target languages rather than relying solely on simple string interpolation.
  2. Handling Addresses from All Around the World - ShopifyThis post details the initial challenges and solutions for international address formatting at Shopify. It describes the problem of varying address structures, ordering, wording, and translations across countries. The solution involves a database of country-specific formats, dynamic form and display representations based on country selection, and the use of specific label keys for translation. An API endpoint was created for data synchronization, and abstraction libraries like '@shopify/address' were developed to simplify developer integration.
  3. Lost in Translations: Bringing the World to Shopify - ShopifyThis post details the initial efforts in internationalizing Shopify's platform. It covers the challenges of handling gendered languages, pluralization rules, and hardcoded strings, and the solutions implemented: building cops and linters to detect violations, automating content extraction into dictionaries, using pseudolocalization to mimic longer words and distinguish translated content, and addressing MySQL's limited UTF8 support. It also describes the development of an internal 'Translation Platform' to automate the process of requesting and integrating translations via GitHub and translation management system APIs.