GoogleCodeExporter
commented
9 years ago It sounds to me like you're using the Javascript side of the API and running
into the url length limit. You see, the JS side utilizes an approach called
JSONP to request translations from Google. Essentially, this means that the
script creates a script element and appends it to the document head in order to
avoid the browsers' built-in same-origin policy. This forces the API to submit
requests via the GET method, where arguments are passed in the URL.
Unfortunately, there are two problems with this approach: MSIE imposes an
approximately 2,000 character limit on URLs, and Google has done the same on
their servers. So when using the Javascript API or GET method, you're really
limited to strings of no more than 2,000 - [all the rest of the url]
characters. This is further limited by the fact that special characters must be
url-encoded in order for transport. So the bottom line is that your url-encoded
string fit into that allowance. Generally, when using the JS API, I recommend
url encoding the original string and then splitting it according clauses (e.g.,
commas (,) and periods (.)), not to exceed 1,200 characters. The easiest and
best way that I've come up with to do this on the pure JS side is with a
regexp. Something like:
var strings = encodeURIComponent(originalString).match(/(.{1,1200}[\,\.\n])/g);
Then simply loop through the strings array to run your translations
You'll need to be familiar with method closures, and you'll need to figure out
how to deal with strings that are only pieces of the overall string you were
trying to translate. But I've got to keep a little bit of the secret sauce for
myself!
Of course, there is an alternative. If you scrap the Google-written JS API, you
can write your own which would send the string back to your own server via
XMLHttpRequest, which can use the POST method. Your would then need to have a
server-side proxy which would forward the request to the RESTful side of the
Translation API and relay the response back to the client to be parsed. Using
the POST method, your url-encoded string can be up to 5,000 characters long, so
you could reduce the number of overall requests from your application by a
factor of 4 or 5. But you would still have to be prepared for strings that are
longer than that.
Because this is not a bug with the API, I'm going to mark it invalid.Original comment by jrgeer...@gmail.com on 30 Sep 2010 at 1:15
Original issue reported on code.google.com by
phelan....@gmail.comon 30 Sep 2010 at 11:46