More Information about Language Properties (IMDF)

Every AVF feature is comprised of an id, featuretype, geometry, and properties. The properties hold the feature attributes.

"properties":{
"category": "room",
"restriction": null,
"name":{ "en": "Ball Room",
         "fr": "Salle de bal" },
...
}

en and fr are properties of the name object – FME reads this structure as name.en and name.fr.

Exposing en and fr languages on the reader causes the reader to add name.en and name.fr fields to the source schema. If features do not have values, then these fields will be set to null.

Setting the default writer language to "en" means that whenever a feature has a label field such as "name", it will be assigned a language property of "en":"<value>" automatically. Even with default ="en", you can still write other language values. For other languages, you need to explicitly set which language you want to write to by using the parent.child notation, so writing to name.fr will cause the French property to be set for the value of the FME field name.fr.

Reader and Writer Language Parameters

What if the reader exposes a language (for example, fr) and the writer sets a different Default Language (for example, en)?

The reader parameter exposing fr will cause name.fr to be read. The writer default of en will cause FME to try to write name.en. If there is a name attribute, it will also be written as name.en. If there is only name.fr on the feature and no name or name.en, then FME will write 'name.en'='null'.