CLI

Reading and extraction

A real catalog can hold thousands of keys across many locales. Two commands let you read it without loading the whole file — both print JSON to stdout, so they pipe and parse cleanly. Reach for these instead of opening glotfile.json.

glotfile get

Extract values for just the keys and locales you care about.

glotfile get "auth.*" --locale en,fr
Option Description
<key-glob>… Keys to include, as positional globs (e.g. auth.*). Repeatable. Default: all keys.
--key <glob> Another key glob, merged with the positionals.
--search <query> Scoped/regex text search, ANDed with the globs and --state. See Searching by text.
--locale <list> Locales to show, comma-separated. Default: every configured locale, source included (so you always have the reference text).
--state <list> Only keys whose shown target locales are in these states: source, missing, machine, needs-review, reviewed.
--fields <list> Cell fields to project: value,state (default), or all for the whole key entry (context/notes/tags/placeholders/plural).
--keys-only Print just the matched key names, one per line — the cheapest overview.
--format <fmt> json (default, nested) or ndjson (one flat row per cell).
--file, -f <path> Target a different state file.

The default output is keyed by key → locale → cell:

{
  "auth.login": {
    "en": { "value": "Log in", "state": "source" },
    "fr": { "value": "Connexion", "state": "reviewed" },
    "de": { "value": "", "state": "missing" }
  }
}

The translation work queue

--state filters which keys appear (by their target locales’ state), while the source locale is always shown as the reference. So this is “every key still untranslated in German, with the English beside it”:

glotfile get --locale en,de --state missing

Add needs-review to also pull the stale strings a source edit invalidated (--state missing,needs-review), and --format ndjson to stream a large result line by line.

Searching by text

Globs match key names. --search matches the content — the same scoped/regex search as the editor’s search box — and ANDs with any globs and --state:

glotfile get --search "value:Sign in"      # keys whose translation contains "Sign in"
glotfile get --search "context:button"      # keys whose context mentions "button"
glotfile get --search "key:auth"            # substring on the key name
glotfile get --search "Sign in"             # no prefix → key + value + context
glotfile get --search "/^auth\\./"          # regex (wrap in /…/)
glotfile get --search "value:/sign\\s?in/"  # scoped regex
Prefix Searches
key: Key names
value: Translations — every locale, including plural forms
context: Context notes
/…/ Regular expression (combine with a scope)
(none) Key, value and context together

Search is case-insensitive; a half-typed regex matches nothing rather than erroring.

glotfile stats

Per-locale progress — reviewed / machine / needs-review / missing — plus totals. Use it to size up the work before a big translate, or to report completion.

glotfile stats                 # JSON
glotfile stats --format text   # a quick table

2480 key(s) · 16 target locale(s) · 73.4% translated, 41.2% reviewed
  de        88.1% translated  (reviewed 1641, machine 545, needs-review 0, missing 294)
  fr        61.0% translated  (reviewed 902, machine 611, needs-review 0, missing 967)
  …
Option Description
--locale <list> Restrict to these comma-separated locales.
--format <fmt> json (default) or text.
--file, -f <path> Target a different state file.
  • Editing from the CLI · Review States · Keys and Locales