Salutation Creator

A PHP library for creating personalized salutations for different contexts with support for titles, gender, and multilingual translations.

Installation

composer require heimrichhannot/salutation-creator

Requirements

• PHP ^8.2
• symfony/translation-contracts ^1 || ^2 || ^3

Features

• ✅ Flexible salutation generation (formal/informal)
• ✅ Support for academic titles (Dr., Prof., etc.)
• ✅ Gender-sensitive salutations
• ✅ Prefix and suffix titles with priorities
• ✅ Name parsing from strings and arrays
• ✅ Multilingual translations via Symfony Translation
• ✅ Extensible with custom name, gender, and title classes

Basic Usage

Basic example:

use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\SalutationCreator;
use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\SalutationContext;
use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Context\Name\GermanTypeName;
use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Context\Gender\Gender;

$salutationCreator = new SalutationCreator($translator);

$context = (new SalutationContext())
    ->setName(new GermanTypeName('Max', 'Mustermann'))
    ->setGender(Gender::MALE);

echo $salutationCreator->generate($context);
// Output: "Sehr geehrter Herr Mustermann"

With (academic) Titles:

use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Context\Title\GermanDoctorTitle;
use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Context\Title\GermanProfessorTitle;
use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Context\Title\PrefixTitle;
use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Helper\Titles;

$context = (new SalutationContext())
    ->setName(new GermanTypeName('Anna', 'Schmidt'))
    ->setGender(Gender::FEMALE)
    ->addTitle(new GermanDoctorTitle())
    ->addTitle(new GermanProfessorTitle())
    ->addTitle(new PrefixTitle('Hero'))
    ->addTitles(Titles::fromString('dr phd unknown')); // Adding titles from string
    

echo $salutationCreator->generate($context);
// Output: "Sehr geehrte Frau Prof. Dr. Hero Dr. Schmidt PhD."

Custom translation key (e.g. informal salutation):

$context = (new SalutationContext())
    ->setName(new GermanTypeName('Lisa', 'Müller'))
    ->setTranslationConfig('format.informal');

echo $salutationCreator->generate($context);
// Output: "Hallo Lisa"

Gender from string:

use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\SalutationCreator;
use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\SalutationContext;
use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Context\Gender\Gender;
use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Context\Name\GermanTypeName;

$data = [
    'firstname' => 'Lisa',
    'lastname' => 'Müller',
    'gender' => 'female',
];

$salutationContext = (new SalutationContext())
    ->setName(new GermanTypeName($data['firstname'], $data['lastname']))
    ->setGender(Gender::tryFromString($data['gender']));

echo (new SalutationCreator($this->translator))->generate($salutationContext);
// Outputs "Sehr geehrte Frau Müller"

Name Parsing

Use the bundled name parsers to create AbstractName instances from strings or arrays before passing them to a SalutationContext.

Parse a name string

use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Context\Name\GermanTypeName;
use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Parser\Name\StringParser;

$name = StringParser::create(GermanTypeName::class)->parse('Max Mustermann');

echo $name?->getFullName();
// Output: "Max Mustermann"

The string parser supports common formats such as Max Mustermann and Mustermann, Max. For single-part names, parsing returns null by default because the result is incomplete.

If incomplete names are acceptable for your use case, enable them explicitly:

$name = StringParser::create(GermanTypeName::class)
    ->allowIncomplete(true)
    ->parse('Mustermann');

echo $name?->getFormalName();
// Output: "Mustermann"

Parse name data from arrays

use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Context\Name\GermanTypeName;
use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Parser\Name\ArrayParser;

$name = ArrayParser::create(GermanTypeName::class)->parse([
    'firstname' => 'Max',
    'lastname' => 'Mustermann',
]);

echo $name?->getFullName();
// Output: "Max Mustermann"

For GermanTypeName, the array parser supports English keys (firstname, lastname, name) and German keys (vorname, nachname, zuname, name). Non-string values are ignored.

Translations / Translation files

Since this library in framework-agnostic, you need to register the translation files manually or copy them to your project's translation directory. You'll find translation files in the symfony translation ICU format in the translations directory of this package.

Register Translation Files with Symfony

In your config/packages/framework.yaml:

framework:
  translator:
    paths:
      - '%kernel.project_dir%/vendor/heimrichhannot/salutation-creator/translations'

Usage in a Controller

use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\SalutationCreator;
use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\SalutationContext;
use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Context\Name\GermanTypeName;
use Symfony\Contracts\Translation\TranslatorInterface;

class MessageController
{
    public function __construct(
        private readonly TranslatorInterface $translator,
    ) {}

    public function sendMessage($firstName, $lastName): string
    {
        $salutation = (new SalutationCreator($this->translator))
            ->generate(
                (new SalutationContext())
                    ->setName(new GermanTypeName($firstName, $lastName))
            );
        
        return $salutation;
    }
}

Custom Translations

Create a translation file translations/salutation_creator+intl-icu.{locale}.yaml:

format.formal: >
  {gender, select,
    m {Sehr geehrter {gender_name} {prefix_titles} {formal_name} {suffix_titles}}
    w {Sehr geehrte {gender_name} {prefix_titles} {formal_name} {suffix_titles}}
    nb {Sehr geehrte*r {gender_name} {prefix_titles} {formal_name} {suffix_titles}}
    other {Sehr geehrter {gender_name} {prefix_titles} {formal_name} {suffix_titles}}
  }
format.informal: 'Hallo {given_name}'

gender.m: 'Herr'
gender.f: 'Frau'
gender.d: ''
gender.nb: ''

title.german_doctor: 'Dr.'
title.german_professor: 'Prof.'

Note: The example and the bundles translation files follow the Symfony ICU MessageFormat, which supports the select syntax for conditional translations based on variables like gender. This allows for flexible, gender-sensitive formatting.

Use custom translation keys and domain

$context->setTranslationConfig(
    formatKey: 'my_custom.format',
    domain: 'my_domain'
);

Available format parameters

The following parameters are available in translations:

• %prefix_titles% - All titles before the name
• %suffix_titles% - All titles after the name
• %gender_name% - Gender designation (Mr./Ms.)
• %gender% - Gender abbreviation (m/f/d)
• %name% - Full name
• %formal_name% - Formal name (usually last name)
• %given_name% - First name
• %has_name% - Containing yes if a name is available, otherwise no. Can be used for conditional translations based on the presence of a name.

Available (bundled) Classes

Name Classes

• GermanTypeName: German names with first and last name

Name Parser Classes

• StringParser: Parses full names from plain strings
• ArrayParser: Parses first and last names from array data

Gender

• Gender::MALE - Male
• Gender::FEMALE - Female
• Gender::DIVERSE - Diverse

Title Classes

• GermanDoctorTitle: Doctor title (Dr.)
• GermanProfessorTitle: Professor title (Prof.)
• PrefixTitle: Custom title before the name
• SuffixTitle: Custom title after the name

Custom Titles

use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Context\Title\PrefixTitle;

$context->addTitle(new PrefixTitle(
    message: 'Dr. med.',
    priority: 5
));

Customization and Extension

Create Custom Gender

You can create custom gender classes by implementing the GenderInterface:

use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Context\Gender\GenderInterface;
use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\SalutationPartResult;

enum CustomGender: string implements GenderInterface
{
    case NON_BINARY = 'nb';
    case PREFER_NOT_TO_SAY = 'x';

    public function build(): SalutationPartResult
    {
        return new SalutationPartResult(
            'gender.' . $this->value,
            domain: 'my_custom_domain',
            fallback: ucfirst($this->value),
        );
    }

    public function getKey(): string
    {
        return $this->value;
    }
}

Create Custom Title Class

You can create custom title classes by extending AbstractTitle:

use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Context\Title\AbstractTitle;
use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Context\Position;
use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\SalutationPartResult;

class CustomTitle extends AbstractTitle
{
    public function build(): SalutationPartResult
    {
        return new SalutationPartResult(
            message: 'title.custom',
            domain: 'my_custom_domain',
            fallback: 'Custom Title'
        );
    }

    public function getPosition(): Position
    {
        return Position::PREFIX;
    }

    public function getPriority(): int
    {
        return 10; // Higher priority = appears first
    }
}

Create Custom Name Class

use HeimrichHannot\SalutationCreator\Context\Name\AbstractName;

class IcelandTypeName extends AbstractName
{
    public function __construct(
        private readonly string $firstName,
        private readonly string $lastName
    ) {}

    public function getFullName(): string
    {
        return $this->firstName . ' ' . $this->lastName;
    }

    public function getFormalName(): string
    {
        return $this->firstName;
    }

    public function getGivenName(): string
    {
        return $this->firstName;
    }
}