android_localization is a command line program to ease working with strings.xml for localizing to non-default locales

Commands

• localize - Creates CSVs of texts that need to be localized
• localized - Populates strings XML files from localized texts in CSVs
• validate - Runs some common validations on XML string files

Quick tour

You are working on your Android app or library & now it is time to localize to non-defaults locales. Probably you wanna find the texts that are yet to be localized, ship them off to a localization service, put the texts in when it comes back & make sure that it didn't get messed up in any way. This CLI helps you automate everything except the actual localization.

./android_localization localize --output-dir ~/to_localize --res-dir ~/my_app/app/src/main/res
./android_localization localized --input-file ~/localized/texts.csv --res-dir ~/my_app/app/src/main/res
./android_localization validate --res-dir ~/my_app/app/src/main/res

Sample input & output

Localize

Let's say we start with these strings.xml files -

<!--values/strings.xml-->
<resources>
    <string name="string_1">string_1 default locale</string>
    <string name="string_2">string_2 default locale</string>
    <string name="string_3">string_3 default locale</string>
</resources>

<!--values-es/strings.xml-->
<resources>
    <string name="string_2">string_2 spanish</string>
</resources>

<!--values-fr/strings.xml-->
<resources>
    <string name="string_2">string_2 french</string>
</resources>

On running ./android_localization localize --output-dir <output_dir> --res-dir <res_dir>, the created CSV would look thus -

string_name	default_locale	es	fr
string_1	string_1 default locale
string_3	string_3 default locale

Localized

Carrying on from the o/p of the localize command, once we put in the localized strings, the input CSV would look thus -

string_name	default_locale	es	fr
string_1	string_1 default locale	string_1 spanish	string_1 french
string_3	string_3 default locale	string_3 spanish	string_3 french

On running ./android_localization localized --input-file <input_file> --res-dir <res_dir>, the strings.xmls would be populated & look thus -

<!--values-es/strings.xml-->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <string name="string_1">string_1 spanish</string>
    <string name="string_2">string_2 spanish</string>
    <string name="string_3">string_3 spanish</string>
</resources>

<!--values-fr/strings.xml-->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <string name="string_1">string_1 french</string>
    <string name="string_2">string_2 french</string>
    <string name="string_3">string_3 french</string>
</resources>

Installation

Pre-built binaries can be found for the following platforms in the release tab

• Linux (64-bit)
• OSX (64-bit)
• Windows (64-bit)

Compiling from source under the assumption that the appropriate rust toolchain is already installed:

git clone git@github.com:jayrave/android_localization.git
cd android_localization
cargo build --release

Deployment

• Update version in cli/Cargo.toml
• Update CHANGELOG.md
• Add release tag which would trigger travis deploy
• Once all executables are uploaded, publish the draft release