t helper does not accept a hash object directly

• I am on the latest ember-intl version
  • Not on the latest, but I believe this still applies to the latest version (looking at the code)
• I have searched the issues of this repo and believe that this is not a duplicate

Environment

• Ember Version: 3.20.5
• Ember CLI Version: 3.15.2
• Ember Intl Version: 5.5.0
• Browser(s): Any
• Node Version: 12.18.4

Steps to Reproduce

If I have a translation with multiple placeholders,

"myTranslation": "You can either {option1} or {option2}"

I need to pass them individually, like so:

{{t myTranslationPath option1='run' option2='hide'}}

It would be ideal if we could pass the options hash directly, like so:

{{t myTranslationPath optionsHash}}

where the optionsHash is

{option1="run", option2="hide"}

However - because of how helpers work, any non-named arguments are passed as an array, and those are not picked up by the ‘t’ helper (just get an error saying that I did not pass the placeholders).

In the above example, it’s just two arguments - but imagine the case where we have variable translation strings, and thus variable arguments - it’s extra legwork that should not be necessary.

Not sure if this is a bug or considered an enhancement (or if there’s a good workaround that I am missing).

[buschtoens]

Thanks a lot @jesdavpet! Your PR looks great. ✨

To answer your questions:

1. I believe that should be sufficient.
2. Correct, AFAIK. Didn’t get to spend a lot of time in this repo in the past months unfortunately.
3. I added a comment to your PR regarding this.

[buschtoens]

Great idea!

Ideally we could solve this using Spreadable Arguments (aka “splarguments”), however the RFC is not even finished yet.

I think extending {{t}} or rather the underlying AbstractHelper is safe, because it currently only accepts a single value:

https://github.com/ember-intl/ember-intl/blob/d4c9d86aa809f9b8215e6cadad52278f8b5e7f89/addon/helpers/-format-base.js#L31-L43

We could change it to something like:

export default class AbstractHelper extends Helper {
  // ...

  compute([value, positionalOptions], namedOptions) {
    const options = positionalOptions
      ? Object.assign({}, positionalOptions, namedOptions)
      : namedOptions;

    if (isEmpty(value)) {
      if (options.allowEmpty ?? this.allowEmpty) {
        return;
      }

      if (typeof value === 'undefined') {
        throw new Error(`${this} helper requires value attribute.`);
      }
    }

    return this.format(value, options);
  }

  // ...
}

Then you could invoke it like so:

{{t "my.key" (hash a="hello" b="world")}}            => hello world

You can also combine it with named parameters and they override the ones from the (hash), which I think is sensible.

{{t "my.key" (hash a="hello" b="world") b="planet"}} => hello planet

Because we’re changing this in the AbstractHelper, this would also affect / improve the other formatting helpers, which I think is positive as well.

From my POV I would happily accept a PR, unless anyone steps forward with good objections.