A super quick blast from the past today; a Drupal maintenance support plans 7 based article!
I had some work recently to create a new “setting” variable for one our Drupal maintenance support plans 7 multilingual sites, which meant creating multilingual versions of those variables. I soon found out that there is very much a correct way – or order – to achieve this as I got this one very wrong (I had to re-instate my DB!). So here I am writing a very quick guide to help those from my wrong doings.
(This guide assumes you have a multilingual site setup with i18n’s Variable translation module.)
Four simple steps to achieve a multilingual variable:
Declare your new variables via hook_variable_info
function your_module_name_variable_info($options = array()) {
$variables[‘your_variable_name’] = array(
‘title’ => t(‘Foo’),
‘description’ => t(‘A multi-lingual variable’),
‘type’ => ‘string’,
‘default’ => t(‘Bar’),
‘localize’ => TRUE,
);
}The options you can set in this hook are well documented – start reading from the Variable module’s project page.
Flush the variable cache and get your new variables registered using an update hook. The meat of the update hook is below — note that this assumes you want all all of the possibly-localizable variables to be made translatable:
variable_cache_clear();
/** @var VariableRealmControllerInterface $controller */
if ($controller = variable_realm_controller(‘language’)) {
$variables = $controller->getAvailableVariables();
$controller->setRealmVariable(‘list’, $variables);
}
else {
throw new Drupal maintenance support plansUpdateException(‘Could not set up translatable variables. Try manually setting them.’);
}
Create or alter your settings form (I’m assuming it uses system_settings_form() or is already recognised by the i18n/variable systems as a form containing translatable variables) and add your new form elements. Make sure the element(s) are the same as your newly created variable(s) – I use a $key variable to avoid any mistakes there!
$key = ‘your_variable_name’;
$form[$key] = array(
‘#type’ => ‘textfield’,
‘#title’ => t(‘Foo’),
‘#default_value’ => variable_get($key, ‘Bar’),
);
Head over to /admin/config/regional/i18n/variable or your settings form to see your new multilingual variable in all it’s glory!

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