Drupal 7 get current language in JavaScript

Posted on 06/07/2016

By default there is no way to access the language through JS in Drupal 7. You could of course read the lang attribute of the <html> tag, but that is far from being an optimal solution.

Luckily, this is pretty easy to achieve through a custom module. Here's what you need to do:

  1. Hook into every page load - both front and back end.
  2. Get the current language code.
  3. Make it available as JS variable.

This code would go in YOUR_MODULE.module file:

  1. /**
    2. 

  2.  * Implements hook_page_alter().
    3. 

  3.  */
    4. 

  4. function YOUR_MODULE_page_alter(&$page) {
    5. 

  5.   global $language;
    6. 

  6.   // Add current language to the JS settings.
    7. 

  7.   drupal_add_js(array(
    8. 

  8.       'YOUR_MODULE' => array(
    9. 

  9.         'language' => $language->language,
    10. 

  10.       ),
    11. 

  11.     ),
    12. 

  12.     array('type' => 'setting')
    13. 

  13.   );
    14. 

  14. }
    15.

You can then access this in JS the following way:

  1. Drupal.settings.YOUR_MODULE.language
    2.

Drupal 8 already includes this and you can use it the following way:

  1. drupalSettings.path.currentLanguage;
    2.