API Keys

Overview

There are two types of API keys used with General Translation:

Production API Key: This is used to translate your content in production.
Development API Key: This is used to translate your content in development.

The behavior between the two types of keys are different, so you should be careful to use the correct key for the environment you are in.

GT_PROJECT_ID=your-project-id
GT_API_KEY=your-api-key

If you are using gt-next or gt-react as a standalone i18n library, you do not need to use API keys.

How to obtain

Navigate to your project dashboard on the General Translation website.

Click on the "API Keys" or "Developer Keys" tab.

Click on the "Create API Key" button.

Copy the API key and paste it into your project's .env file.

Behavior

Most simply put, Prod API keys persist translations, while Dev API keys do not. You use Dev API keys for prototyping translations and Prod API keys when you are ready to deploy.

Development API Key

This type of key is useful for testing and development purposes. When using a development API key, translations are done on-demand and memoized in memory. Translations will not be saved.

The development API key is used by components rendered in the browser (client-side) and by server-side rendered components to facilitate on-demand translation. This means that it must be exported to the client. This key should NEVER be used in production environments and NEVER should be passed to the client in a production environment.

# example Vite .env file for dev
VITE_GT_PROJECT_ID=your-project-id
VITE_GT_API_KEY=your-dev-api-key # Only used in development

Warning: Development API keys are passed to the client to facilitate client-side translation in development. This is fine in development environments, but is a security risk in production environments. If your application is open to the internet, you should never use a development API key.

Production API Key

When using a production API key, translations are persisted. This means that translations will be saved (either in a CDN or in your app's bundle) to be used at runtime.

This key is used in two places:

The gtx-cli tool. Check out this guide for more information.
The gt-next library when translations occur at runtime in a production build (server-side only, not used by gt-react).
- <Tx> and tx() functions are used to translate content at runtime.

The API key is only used by the server, and it should NEVER be exported to the client.

GT_PROJECT_ID=your-project-id
GT_API_KEY=your-prod-api-key # This key should never be exported to the client

Notes

Development API keys are used for testing and development purposes. It should only be used in development.
Production API keys are used for production purposes.

Next steps

Check out how to use the <T> component to see live translations in development.
See the usage guide for the cli tool.