How to change the behaviour or display of the language switcher?

Question

On translated pages the language switcher shows links to translated languages, but for untranslated languages there is no link, but the name of the language without a link. In the case, that there is no corresponding node in a given language, i would like the language switcher to show a link to the front page instead.

How can i accomplish this behaviour? Thank you very much!

Answer 1

Add next into template.php file of your theme:

<?php 
  function YOURTHEMENAME_links__locale_block($variables) {
    foreach($variables['links'] as $key => $lang) {
      if (isset($lang['attributes']['class']) && in_array('locale-untranslated', $lang['attributes']['class'])) {
        // Set here any page link.
        $variables['links'][$key]['href'] = '<front>';
      }
    }
    return theme_links($variables);
  }

Answer 2

there is a module for this now - Language Switcher Fallback. Does exactly what you asked, directing the user to the frontpage if no translation to a node. See here https://drupal.org/project/language_switcher_fallback

Answer 3

In the end I used this approach.

function YOURTHEME_language_switch_links_alter(array &$links, $type, $path) {
  $language_type = variable_get('translation_language_type', LANGUAGE_TYPE_INTERFACE);

  if ($type == $language_type && preg_match("!^node/(\d+)(/.+|)!", $path, $matches)) {
    $node = node_load((int) $matches[1]);

    if (empty($node->tnid)) {
      // If the node cannot be found nothing needs to be done. If it does not
      // have translations it might be a language neutral node, in which case we
      // must leave the language switch links unaltered. This is true also for
      // nodes not having translation support enabled.
      if (empty($node) || entity_language('node', $node) == LANGUAGE_NONE || !translation_supported_type($node->type)) {
        return;
      }
      $langcode = entity_language('node', $node);
      $translations = array($langcode => $node);
    }
    else {
      $translations = translation_node_get_translations($node->tnid);
    }

    foreach ($links as $langcode => $link) {
      if (isset($translations[$langcode]) && $translations[$langcode]->status) {
        // Translation in a different node.
        $links[$langcode]['href'] = 'node/' . $translations[$langcode]->nid . $matches[2];
      }
      else {
        // No translation in this language, or no permission to view.
        $links[$langcode]['href'] = '<front>';
      }
    }
  }
}

Which replaces this code fragment in the original Translation module.

  else {
    // No translation in this language, or no permission to view.
    unset($links[$langcode]['href']);
    $links[$langcode]['attributes']['class'][] = 'locale-untranslated';

I am pretty sure the other solution is more beautiful, but this solution is also working.