Introduction¶
This Python API offers a way to validate and lookup languages tags.
Import the module:
from language_tags import tags
To check whether the language_tag is valid use tags.check(). For example ‘nl-Be’ is valid but ‘nl-BE-BE’ is invalid.
> print(tags.check('nl-BE'))
True
> print(tags.check('nl-BE-BE'))
False
For meaningful error output see tags.tag().errors:
> errors = tags.tag('nl-BE-BE').errors
> for err in errors
> print(err.message)
Extra region subtag 'BE' found.
Lookup descriptions of tags:
> print(tags.description('nl-BE'));
['Dutch', 'Flemish', 'Belgium']
Lookup descriptions of a language subtag:
> print(tags.language('nl').description);
['Dutch', 'Flemish']
Lookup tags by description:
> language_subtags = tags.search('Flemish')
> print(language_subtags[0])
'nl'
Get the language subtag of a tag:
> print(repr(tags.tag('nl-BE').language))
'{"subtag": "nl", "record": {"Subtag": "nl", "Suppress-Script": "Latn", "Added": "2005-10-16", "Type": "language", "Description": ["Dutch", "Flemish"]}, "type": "language"}'
A redundant tag is a grandfathered registration whose individual subtags appear with the same semantic meaning in the registry 1. A redundant tag has descriptions and can have a preferred tag.
> redundant_tag = tags.tag('es-419')
> print(redundant_tag.descriptions)
['Latin American Spanish']
> print(redundant_tag.valid)
True
> print(redundant_tag.region.description)
['Latin America and the Caribbean']
> print(redundant_tag.region.language)
['Spanish', 'Castilian']
The remainder of the previously registered tags are “grandfathered” 1. Grandfathered tags cannot be parsed into subtags. A grandfathered tag has descriptions. Most grandfathered tags have valid perferred tags.
> grandfathered_tag = tags.tag('i-klingon')
> print(grandfathered_tag.descriptions)
['Klingon']
> print(grandfathered_tag.valid)
False
> print(grandfathered_tag.subtags)
[]
> print(grandfathered_tag.preferred)
tlh
> preferred_tag = grandfathered_tag.preferred
> print(preferred_tag.language.description)
['Klingon', 'tlhIngan-Hol']
For the complete api documentation see next chapter.