Pathauto is a very popular module used on almost all Drupal sites. However, its integration with multilingual sites has limitations. For this reason, the Pathauto i18n module was developed as an extension to Pathauto. This module enhances functionality and improves automatic alias generation support for multilingual sites.
Purpose and features
The main purpose of Pathauto i18n is to extend the core Pathauto features by adding multilingual alias support for taxonomy terms and users, as well as enabling automatic alias creation for all languages. By default, Drupal core only supports multilingual aliases for nodes.
1. Multilingual templates for user and taxonomy term aliases
Pathauto i18n provides template settings for user and taxonomy term aliases with multilingual support.
2. Generate aliases for all languages when an entity is created
By default, when you create a node, an alias is created only for the selected language. Pathauto i18n allows alias generation for all site languages at once.
How It Works
The module consists of 3 submodules:
- Pathauto i18n Node
- Pathauto i18n Taxonomy
- Pathauto i18n User
Each submodule enables Pathauto i18n support for the corresponding entity type.
Once the appropriate submodule is enabled, the entity creation form will show an option to generate aliases for all languages.
Example
Suppose the site has 3 languages: English, French, and German. After creating a node without Pathauto i18n, you get only one alias for the selected node language.
If you enable the pathauto_i18n_node module and repeat the same process, you will get 3 aliases, one for each language.
Where Is It Useful?
Drupal supports two types of multilingual configurations:
- Entity Translation – each language has its own entity.
- Field Translation – a single entity exists across all languages, only certain fields are translated.
This module is especially useful when using field translation and your entity must be accessible in all languages with clean URLs. It is also helpful for entity translation if you want to generate aliases in all available languages.