How can I get a user's language from their e-mail address in PHP?

Question

I'm using the Mime Mail module to send HTML e-mails to my users. I have created a template, mimemail-message.tpl.php, and placed it in my theme's directory. This template defines header and footer links and is applied to every outgoing e-mail.

However, I have a multilingual site and I want to customize these footers per language. My PHP skills are limited but I'm fairly confident I can do this with a switch statement if I can get the e-mail recipient's language.

I'm having trouble figuring out how to get the user's language. The Mime Mail module provides a variable, $recipient, which is set to the e-mail address of the user. Is it possible to load a user based on the e-mail address and then get the user's language?

Answer 1

I don't think there's an API function to do exactly that, but a single database query would get you that information:

// Query the database
$args = array(':email' => $email_address);
$lang = db_query('SELECT language FROM {users} WHERE mail = :email', $args)->fetchField();

// If there's no language string use LANGUAGE_UNDEFINED instead.
// This is also a fallback method to use the default language 
// if the user is not found in the database.
if (!$lang || empty($lang)) {
  $lang = LANGUAGE_UNDEFINED; // Or whatever your default language is
}

If you need the user object itself for whatever reason, you can use a slight variation on the above:

$args = array(':email' => $email_address);
$uid = db_query('SELECT uid FROM {users} WHERE mail = :email', $args)->fetchField();

if ($uid) {
  $account = user_load($uid);
  $lang = $account->language;
}

You could also take advantage of the $conditions parameter of user_load_multiple(), but this method has been deprecated so it might not be the best idea to use it:

$users = user_load_multiple(array(), array('mail' => $email_address));
if (!empty($users)) {
  $account = array_shift($users);
  $lang = $account->language;
}

Last but not least, you could use an EntityFieldQuery, although this would probably be overkill for this particular task. It is a useful thing to know though:

$query = new EntityFieldQuery;
$query->entityCondition('entity_type', 'user')
  ->propertyCondition('mail', $email_address);

$results = $query->execute();
if (isset($results['user'])) {
  $users = user_load_multiple(array_keys($results['user']));
  if (!empty($users)) {
    $account = array_shift($users);
    $lang = $account->language;
  }
}

Answer 2

I'm doing it this way in the mimemail-message.tpl.php, much simpler, not sure if it's the correct way but it works.

global $language;   
switch ($language->language)  //detect the interface language
{
 case "zh-hant":   // for chinese taiwan
   $header = " ";
   $footer = " ";
   break;

 case "zh-hk":     // for chinese hong kong
   $header = " ";
   $footer = " ";
   break;

 case "zh-sg":     // for chinese singapore
   $header = " ";
   $footer = " ";
   break;

 case "zh-hans":   // for chinese china
   $header = " ";
   $footer = " ";
   break;

 default:  // for english and other languages
   $header = " ";
   $footer = " ";
}

print $header;
print $body;
print $footer;