What is the Best Database Structure for Multilingual Villa Data in Laravel?

Based on your scenario, especially with just a few dozen items, you have a few valid options. Here’s a summary to help you decide:

Option 1: Single Table with Multiple Language Columns

Pros:

• Simple to set up and query.
• No need for joins when retrieving a villa.

Cons:

• Not scalable if you ever add more languages.
• The table structure gets “wide” quickly if you have many translated fields.
• Changes to the language list require schema updates.

Option 2: Separate Translation Table (Manual Implementation)

Pros:

• More flexible if you plan to add languages later.
• Keeps your main table clean.
• Easier to manage translations dynamically.

Cons:

• Requires joins to fetch localized content.
• Slightly more complex to implement and maintain.

Option 3: Use a Package like laravel-translatable

Pros:

• Provides an elegant API to manage translations.
• Abstracts away the complexity of managing separate tables.
• Easily scalable for additional languages.
• Keeps your code cleaner and more maintainable.

Cons:

• Adds an additional dependency.
• There’s a learning curve to understand the package’s features, but it pays off in maintainability for multilingual data.

Recommended Approach

For your small-scale project (several dozen villas) and fixed number of languages, Option 1 might work fine initially; it's straightforward and has minimal overhead. However, if you foresee maintenance challenges in the future or if you’d like a cleaner separation of concerns (and the possibility to add languages without schema changes), then Option 3 using a package like laravel-translatable is the most optimal.

The laravel-translatable package will let you work with translations as if they were built into your Eloquent models while handling the underlying storage in a separate translation table. This is a common approach in Laravel applications and helps keep your codebase flexible and maintainable.

Example with laravel-translatable

Once installed, your model might look like this:

PHPCopied
use Astrotomic\Translatable\Translatable;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Villa extends Model
{
    use Translatable;

    public $translatedAttributes = ['title', 'description'];
}

Then, you would have a migration for the main table:

PHPCopied
Schema::create('villas', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->id();
    // Other non-translated fields
    $table->timestamps();
});

And a migration for the translations:

PHPCopied
Schema::create('villa_translations', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->id();
    $table->foreignId('villa_id')->constrained()->onDelete('cascade');
    $table->string('locale')->index();
    $table->string('title')->nullable();
    $table->text('description')->nullable();
    $table->timestamps();
    
    $table->unique(['villa_id', 'locale']);
});

This setup gives you the benefits of Option 2 (the clear separation of multilingual data) while making it much easier to work with in your application.

Final Thought

For a project like yours where the number of items is small but translations are critical, using a package like laravel-translatable (Option 3) is typically the optimal long‐term solution. It provides a clean, scalable, and more maintainable design while abstracting away the manual handling of translations.