capturing translations from Google

Getting Started
1

Hi all,

I’m new to XOJO and just an amateur developer. During the xmass holidays I would like to use XOJO to build a small app to automate something I need to do frequently: translate a plain text file and store the source and translated lines in an XLIFF file. I would like to use Google Translate (or Microsoft Translator) for the translation work.

I see I can send a translation to google like this: https://translate.google.com/?sl=&en=0&tl=nl&text=This%20is%20a%20small%20test
But I don’t know how I can capture the reply.

Has anyone done this before OR is there a smarter way to do this? I’m hoping someone can share some code to get me started.

thanks & Merry Christmas!

gert

2

In the mean time I learned that I should do an API call and get a JSON object that needs to be parsed as a dictionary.

{ "data": { "translations": [ { "translatedText": "This is what I need to retrieve." } ] } }

I tried to use the Lookup method, but I’m not sure how to use this. Could someone help me to retrieve “This is what I need to retrieve.”?

thanks

gert

3

You may want to have a look at https://forum.xojo.com/10694-web-robot
Alain Bailleul posted an interesting example.

4

Michel, I think that what Alain is doing is not the right approach…

This is what I got so far:

[code] Dim r As New JSONItem
Dim x As New JSONItem
Dim y As New JSONItem
Dim z As String
r.Load(result)

if r.IsArray ( ) then
MsgBox “JSONItem IsArray”
else
r.Compact = True

x=r.Lookup("data", "test1")
y=x.Lookup("translations", "test2")
z=y.Lookup("translatedText", "test3")
MsgBox(z)

End[/code]

All is OK till I do the lookup in y. Then I get a JSONexception error.
y ToString contains:

[{"translatedText":"ce est un petit test."}]

so I don’t understand why I cannot get the translatedText out of it via a lookup…

5

Alain project may not be to your liking, but it does work…

6

I’m sure it work for the regular Google Translate. I want to use the paid variant.

7

[quote=154976:@Gert Van Assche]Michel, I think that what Alain is doing is not the right approach…

This is what I got so far:

[code] Dim r As New JSONItem
Dim x As New JSONItem
Dim y As New JSONItem
Dim z As String
r.Load(result)

if r.IsArray ( ) then
MsgBox “JSONItem IsArray”
else
r.Compact = True

x=r.Lookup("data", "test1")
y=x.Lookup("translations", "test2")
z=y.Lookup("translatedText", "test3")
MsgBox(z)

End[/code]

All is OK till I do the lookup in y. Then I get a JSONexception error.
y ToString contains:

[{"translatedText":"ce est un petit test."}]

so I don’t understand why I cannot get the translatedText out of it via a lookup…[/quote]
The reason this last one fails is that it is an array, not simply a key/value pair.

You will need code that looks like this:

z = y.Child(0).Lookup("translatedText", "test3")
8

Greg, that is indeed what I needed. Thanks a lot!