Using Laravel-style :dot-notated replacements instead of {brackets} without messageCompiler workaround?

[SamBrishes]

Does Vue I18n support Laravel-styled :dot_notated replacement placeholders? I checked the documentation but couldn’t find anything suggesting that Vue I18n can handle this format natively.

Since my translation files come from Laravel, I would prefer not to rewrite all placeholders to {key} just to satisfy the Vue I18n syntax. I ended up implementing a custom messageCompiler to support :key replacements, but this feature is currently marked as experimental.

const i18n = createI18nPlugin({
    //...
    messageCompiler(message) {
        if (typeof message !== 'string') {
            return () => message
        }

        // Find keys in message
        const keys = Array.from(new Set((message.match(/:\w+/g) ?? []).map(m => m.slice(1))));
        if (keys.length === 0) {
            return () => message;
        }

        // Create replacement patterns
        const patterns = keys.map(key => ({
            key,
            re: new RegExp(`(^|[^\\w]):${key.replace(/[.*+?^${}()|[\]\\]/g, '\\$&')}(?![\\w])`, 'g')
        }));

        // Handle replacements - :laravel style.
        return (ctx: any) => {
            const values = ctx?.values
            if (!values || typeof values !== 'object') {
                return message;
            }

            let out: string = message as string;
            for (const { key, re } of patterns) {
                if (values[key] === undefined || values[key] === null) {
                    continue
                }
                const v = String(values[key]);
                out = out.replace(re, (_m, prefix) => `${prefix}${v}`);
            }
            return out;
        }
    },
});

So. Is there an officially supported way (or a recommended pattern) to handle Laravel-styled :placeholders in Vue I18n? Or is custom compilation the only practical route right now?

Thanks,
Sam

[absidue]

The documented format is the only supported one, if you want a different format you'll need to use a custom message compiler (like you already did) or find another library that already does what you want.