lconv

lconv is a tiny JavaScript module for converting between ISO 639 language codes. We know, we know, there are a bunch of libraries that do this out there already. So why make our own? Well this module pulls data directly from the official SIL website, and has the ability to download the latest offline data. As a result, this library supports every language whether it's dead, dying, deceased, active, historic, literary... you name it!

This library also supports ISO code resolution. Say, for example, you're looking up the Cantonese Language code yue, which only exists as an ISO 639-3 language code. Therefore, requesting the ISO 639-1 code for Cantonese would return null. However, Cantonese belongs to the Chinese macro-language, which does have an ISO 639-1 code. If we resolve the Cantonese language code to Chinese, then we'll get zh back instead of null. Pretty neat, eh?

Using the API

To use lconv is extremely simple. Use it like this:

const lconv = require('lconv');

lconv('English', { from: 'label', to: 2 }); // ==> eng
lconv('eng', { from: 3, to: 1 }); // 
lconv('yue', { from: 3, to: 1, resolve: true }); // ==> zh

lconv takes three options:

• from: The ISO code of the given string. Can be either 1, 2, 3, or "label". If it is not provided it will be guessed.
• to: The ISO code to convert to. Can be either 1, 2, 3, or "label". If it is not provided it will be guessed.
• resolve: Boolean denoting whether to resolve language codes or not. By default this is set to "false".

Generating Data

If you do for some reason clone this repo, to generate the JSON data file needed for the module to run, just run:

$ npm run data

Testing

We'll... umm... add tests at some point. Check back later.