CB may have a language switching bug in Joomla 4

Hi there,

I'm currently testing CB with Joomla 4. Since my site is an English/Japanese multilingual site, I have installed the ja-JP plugin.

I use FaLang for my multilingual site and I use its FaLang language switcher to switch languages. Also, the default language of my site is Japanese. When the site language is switched to English by the language switcher, only CB remains in Japanese.

There was no such issue in Joomla 3, so I'm guessing that CB has a bug in Joomla 4. In Joomla 4, when I go to System > Manage: Languages and set the default language to English, CB is displayed in English.

Could you please check if CB has any issues switching languages in Joomla 4?

Thanks

My test environment:
- Joomla 4.2.6
- Community Builder 2.8.0
- FaLang 4.8
- PHP 8.0.27

 [P.S.] 
CB has a database collation of latin1_swedish_ci during installation. However, with this, when I enter Japanese and save it, it becomes ????? and I cannot save it normally. So I changed latin1_swedish_ci to utf8mb4_unicode_ci via phpMyAdmin.

Does it work fine using Joomla's built in language switcher module? CB only loads whatever language Joomla tells us to load using Joomla's own API to request the loaded language.

CB has a database collation of latin1_swedish_ci during installation. However, with this, when I enter Japanese and save it, it becomes ????? and I cannot save it normally. So I changed latin1_swedish_ci to utf8mb4_unicode_ci via phpMyAdmin.

We don't set the collation. The default collation for your database is wrong. Suggest fixing your database default collation to prevent this for newly created tables.

Hi krileon,

Thank you for your reply.

If I were in your position, I would focus on the point that the issues I raised are ONLY in CB.
I have over 15 years experience with Joomla and have worked with multilingual sites for many years. FaLang obviously provides a language switcher on par with Joomla. Also note that Joomla 3 has no problems with CB language switching.

By the way, the Server connection collation is set to utf8mb4_unicode_ci in the General settings of our phpMyAdmin.

Thanks

Was able to confirm something is not working right with Joomla's language API. We're calling the below to get the currently loaded language. This API has always worked fine, but in Joomla 4 it is only ever returning the sites default language. This seams like a regression bug in Joomla.

forge.joomlapolis.com/issues/9118

By the way, the Server connection collation is set to utf8mb4_unicode_ci in the General settings of our phpMyAdmin.

phpMyAdmin default and actual database default often are not configured the same. phpMyAdmin default will apply to tables created in phpMyAdmin. Your database default will be in your database configuration file. Regardless will review forcing a default collation in a future CB release.

forge.joomlapolis.com/issues/9117

Found the cause. Something was loading CBs language files before Joomla language switcher set the language into the document. In my case it was Kunena's CB plugin loading CB extremely early. Am implementing a fix for next build release to avoid the loader cache from preventing loading in future languages.

This is now fixed in latest CB build release.