Im facing a problem where I have an array that contains words in english, for example:
Array = ["Apple", "Orange", "Banana"]
What I want is that if the user doesn't use English as primary language, for example instead Swedish, I want the array to be translated to that language using the strings.xml provided translations. So that the array becomes this instead:
Array = ["Äpple", "Apelsin", "Banan"]
With Xcode I could just use .localized after the array but I couldn't find similar function in Android studio. Anyone that has a good solution for this?
Greetings, Pontus.
Related
is there a way in android to get a list of all characters from the alphabet for a specific language ?
Thanks
I don't think that's a method for that. Instead, you can view a list of alphabets and collation orders of languages here.
Then, store them in an array using this way.
char[] alphabet = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz".toCharArray();
this is my first question :)
I'm developing an application that stores animal species in a database. The app must be multilanguage, so I tought to take advantage of using strings.xml resource files.
The idea is to store the english name of the species on the db, for example "cat", "dog" etc.. and then display to the user the actual translation, based on an xml like this (for italian):
<string name="dog">Cane</string>
<string name="cat">Gatto</string>
The problem is that R.string contains the name dog and cat, but they are actually int, so I'm searching a way to use the "dog" string to be used to compare the R.string.dog translated value.
I'm almost sure that my design is terribly wrong, but don't know what the correct way to doing this kind of work, since the app is now in a very early stage of development.
Thank you
EDIT with example
This example illustrates the problem:
Database data:
row1: id="1", value="dog"
row2: id="2", value="cat"
String file strings.xml:
<string name="dog">Dog</string>
<string name="cat">Cat</string>
String file strings-it.xml:
<string name="dog">Cane</string>
<string name="cat">Gatto</string>
My problem is: the user want to insert a specie in his native language (eg. "Cane"), and I want to search in the DB for its existence before inserting.
I should loop for every row on the DB (where values are stored in english), get the the translation of each row (eg: I found cat, then I translate to "Gatto") and compare with the user input.
Is it possible to do that?
If you have a string name you want to use, you can use getIdentifier() to get the string id. As an example, to find R.string.cat:
Resources res = getResources();
int stringId = res.getIdentifier("cat", "string", packageName);
In the above example, if there is no R.string.cat found, it will simply return 0. It's an easy test to see if a string exists.
Alternatively, you can get an array of all the string ids in your R.java by using something like:
Field[] fields = R.string.class.getFields();
int[] ids = new int[fields.length];
for(int i=0;i<field.length;i++)
ids[i] = field[i].getInt(null);
Of course, that will also look for any strings that you don't really intend as translations, such as dialog/window titles, label/button captions, etc. I wouldn't advise it in the general case. If I had to do it, I'd prefix the "translation" strings with something so I could easily tell what is what, something like "entry_cat".
Note that we're using reflection, and if you have a lot of strings, it could slow you down. If you are going to loop through R.java, I'd advise only doing it on start-up, and saving the values in some sort of array/list.
First read this.
http://developer.android.com/training/basics/supporting-devices/languages.html
You can create value folder with many language's i.e janapee,dutch etc
you can find out value folder inside the res folder in your project. and create new value folders.
res/
values/
strings.xml
values-es/
strings.xml
values-fr/
strings.xml
JUST TRANSLATE YOUR WORDS BY GOOGLE TRANSLATOR IN ANY LANGUAGE AND PUT INSIDE THE STRING.XML FILE .
Well, first of all, start reading this here:
Suppose that your application's default language is English. Suppose
also that you want to localize all the text in your application to
French, and most of the text in your application (everything except
the application's title) to Japanese. In this case, you could create
three alternative strings.xml files, each stored in a locale-specific
resource directory:
res/values/strings.xml Contains English text for all the strings that
the application uses, including text for a string named title.
res/values-fr/strings.xml Contain French text for all the strings,
including title. res/values-ja/strings.xml Contain Japanese text for
all the strings except title. If your Java code refers to
R.string.title, here is what will happen at runtime:
If the device is set to any language other than French, Android will
load title from the res/values/strings.xml file. If the device is set
to French, Android will load title from the res/values-fr/strings.xml
file. Notice that if the device is set to Japanese, Android will look
for title in the res/values-ja/strings.xml file. But because no such
string is included in that file, Android will fall back to the
default, and will load title in English from the
res/values/strings.xml file.
I can easily set a Currency using it's ISO 4217 code, such as "USD". This will allow me to grab the dollar symbol using .getSymbol(), however, how the heck do I get the display name "dollar" out of the Currency?
I have a spinner, I'd like to populate with the names of currencies like "dollar", "euro", "yen", etc. however, I can't extract these from the ISO 4217 codes. Shouldn't this be quite easy?
Please note, I can't use simple string arrays to solve this. That's because I grab the default locale and add it's currency to the spinner mentioned above. This is the reason I need to be able to grab currency display names dynamically, I don't know all the currencies users may use.
Thanks!
Refer to this question.
Can I get a text description of an ISO currency code in Java?
It might answer your question. There are many answers on that page.
I have an android app that I want to internationalise.
I have extracted the app strings and deployed them in resource files and all that works fine.
The remaining issue I have is that my app reads a folder structure and actually pulls filenames in as words to use in the app.
I have these filenames/words defined in my xml, but I can't figure out how to dynamically lookup the english language word.
So. here's the scenario.
Filename = hello.png. I want the word "hello" to appear in my app corresponding to the image; I have the word "hello" defined in my strings.xml and the corresponding language files as "hello_file" (i.e. the word "hello" can be accessed by R.string.hello_file). What I think I need to do is take the english word from the filename and do a reverse lookup on the strings.xml file and find the node corresponding to that and then lookup the corresponding word in the strings_xx.xml file for the iso language translations.
But I don't know how to do that...
Perhaps I'm over complicating this? It does not seem an ideal use case for the strings_xx.xml translation facility.
Any other ideas?
Use string array http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/string-resource.html#StringArray
String[] files = getResources().getStringArray(R.array.file_names);
In code you can loop through all values to find which one you need.
Are there any suggestions on which strings you should store in strings.xml and which strings can be stored as String objects? For example, do I have to put a string into strings.xml, if I use it only to complete a certain action and then it can be destroyed? And what is the main reason in storing strings in xml? Thanks in advance for your answers.
Any string that will be displayed to the user should be in strings.xml. This is useful in case you ever want to support other languages for your application. If you do, you just create a new strings.xml file that language with translated values. You can learn more about it here.
One reason is multi-language support.
You should store the strings that you use in Activities - TextView, button's caption and so on.
You should put most constants in strings.xml, your app title, button names, textview contents...mostly things that wont change in your application.
Another reason for storing strings in xml is for localization. You can store different files for each different Locale or language, and Android will grab the correct file for the phone's selected Locale or language.
Here is a link to the String resource Android page, it will go more deeply into how the language support is done.
You don't store all the strings in strings.xml, but only strings constants related to user interface, the strings that you want to translate in different languages.
You can have different folder like :
values
values-fr
values-de
in each a strings.xml file with you UI messages translated in many languages.
Regards,
Stéphane