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WPML coding API

WPML offers functions that can be used in your WordPress theme to provide correct support for multilingual themes.

Function	Purpose	Notes
do_action(‘icl_language_selector’)	Insert the drop down language selector.	Described in the language setup section of the getting started guide.
do_action(‘icl_navigation_menu’)	Insert the top navigation menu.	Described in the navitaion section of the getting started guide.
do_action(‘icl_navigation_breadcrumb’)	Insert the breadcrumbs trail.
do_action(‘icl_navigation_sidebar’)	Insert the sidebar navigation.
icl_get_home_url()	Link to the home page in the active language.	Described in the home page link section of the getting started guide.
icl_get_languages(’skip_missing=N’)	Used for building custom language selectors.	Described in the custom language switcher section of the getting started guide.
icl_link_to_element(ID, type, text, arguments, anchor)	Used for creating language dependent links in themes.	Described in the hard coded links section of the getting started guide.
icl_object_id(ID, type, return_original_if_missing, language_code)	Used for calculating the IDs of objects (usually categories) in the current language.	Described in the language dependent IDs section of the getting started guide.

Language constants

WPML defines the following constants which can be used in the theme:

Constant	Description	Example
ICL_LANGUAGE_CODE	Code for the current language	fr
ICL_LANGUAGE_NAME	Name of current language, in the current language	Français
ICL_LANGUAGE_NAME_EN	Name of the current language name in English	French

WPML comes with its own CSS and JS files that style its navigation and drop-down language switcher.

If you don’t need them in your theme, you can tell WPML not to load these files. Do to that, define the following constants in your theme:

Constant	The file it disables
ICL_DONT_LOAD_NAVIGATION_CSS	Navigation stylesheets – cms-navigation-base.css and cms-navigation.css
ICL_DONT_LOAD_LANGUAGE_SELECTOR_CSS	Drop-down language selector stylesheet – language-selector.css
ICL_DONT_LOAD_LANGUAGES_JS	Drop-down language selector Javascript – sitepress.js

To set these constants, define them in the theme’s functions.php file. For example:

define('ICL_DONT_LOAD_NAVIGATION_CSS', true);