When I write in my strings.xml "android:strings/" I only get a few strings, is there the possibility to access any string of the Android platform and how?
Bonus questions: is there a site where I can explore all strings, I remember finding such a page in the past but was not able to find something like that anymore, grepcode does not have Android 6 yet to explore.
Most strings on the Android platform are declared private - meaning developers should not be trying to use them. They may not exist, or the IDs may change between different builds of Android.
However, if you know for certain that a particular string will exist on a device, you can reference a private string using the #* prefix:
<TextView android:text="#*android:string/data_usage_warning_body" />
Just don't do this if you expect the App to work across multiple devices and Android versions.
Bonus: androidxref is a good site for exploring the Android source. You can find some resource strings here
You can check out the github repository for Android. It contains all the resources including the string.xml. The following link should bring you to the marshmallow resource folder: Android on Github
I don't know if you can just reference those string directly.
Related
In my project in Android Studio, I have many different string values that I've put in different strings-....xml files. Sometimes finding a specific string resource gets really difficult, even when I'm using a naming convention.
So, I was wondering:
Considering that the string resources names are unique across all the files, is there any way to see all the string resources in one place? Or search through all of them?
(Double-Shift search doesn't actually make it easier!)
There is a new feature in the latest Android Studio 0.8.7 (only in canary channel yet) – Translation Editor.
http://tools.android.com/recent/androidstudio087released
Our client application has means of updating a "language file" from a server occasionally. Yet it seems quite a challenge to support it on android..
I tried using inflate( XmlPullParser, ... ) but later found it doesn't support non-binary XML files.
The following are given:
Our app uses #string/resource_id resources to support languages. Basically it supports English, but the requirement is to provide language resources dynamically. That is, if we need to support Greek, or provide a change to the Greek language texts, we should be able to provide that on runtime.
So, on runtime our app connects a service and downloads an XML file, with syntax similar to string.xml in the current language.
What remains is how to change the text resources in the application in a sane manner (not one by one..)
I tried using inflate(with the XmlPullParser parameter) but it seems to be intended for use with binary pre-compiled XML files. To use that it would require to binarize the XML before hand, and that would be less compatible, not to say that aapt.exe tool is less documented, especially in my case.
So, any idea?
Don't know if it can be done everywhere in Android but instead of using native resources reference, maybe you can use the Java Properties class and using the device locale configuration to retrieve the wanted strings programmatically?
I have an iOS App localized (with Localizable.strings files).
I've built now an Android version. I understand the way the i18n is made on android but I would like to avoid redoing the i18n, as almost all the Strings have the same meaning between iOS and Android.
Are there any tools that will do this conversion, or at least speed up the process?
Edit:
Ideally I would like to find a method/tool that would do the following
Input:
'iOS Localizable.strings files-(en,fr,it,pt,etc)'
'res/values/strings.xml'
Output:
'res/values-en/strings.xml'
'res/values-fr/strings.xml'
'res/values-it/strings.xml'
'res/values-pt/strings.xml'
'res/values-etc/strings.xml'
There is a specialised service here: Loco.
There are threads here on SO which deal with conversation:
Are there any tools to convert an Iphone localized string file to a string resources file that can be used in Android?
Any tool to convert Android's XML localization to iPhone's .strings file?
Another possiblity would be to use an online translation service. These services accepts text not only in Android and iPhone but also in many other formats. Upload the android text and download the iPhone text. A list of available services can be found on SO, see Any collaborative tool/website to localize an Android app? Some of these services are commercial, but even these provide a 30days test period. But note that the main focus is on translation and not on conversation.
Here is some code that does that: https://github.com/wrapp/LocalizedStrings2Android
Put it in a jar and it is ready to use.
You can use this tool I created on JSFiddle:
https://jsfiddle.net/danielgindi/x9njj9gj/
[StackOverflow requires me to write some code here because of the JSFiddle link]
Just paste in your localization strings inside the correct box, and you'll get the converted version in the other boxes (Between Android, iOS, and JS).
This tries to preserve comments too.
Cheers!
I've created an app which pulls data from a JSON file and displays it.
Now that app is specific for one sports team. I want to create the same app for 10 other teams.
Plus there will be an accompanying pro version of the app.
I'll be doing the same thing for the iOS version.
The only difference between the apps will be colors, logos and url of the data source.
I wanted to know if there was a better way to create apps. Instead of individually creating 40 different projects.
It will help me in updating the app as opposed to copy pasting the same code 40X.
Are there any special features available in eclipse and xcode to do that?
Thanks
I would simply swap out the resources for each team and rebuild the app.
For example, with Android, maintain an AndroidManifest.xml and a res/ subdirectory tree for each team. When it is time to build, simply copy over the resources into the project, overwriting the previous team.
I don't know of any existing tool to do this automatically, however.
Have you looked into using PhoneGap and just create a "mobile site" that detects the app that is connecting and adjusts the data/styles accordingly.
There's always the possibility of creating ONE app allowing the user to set the team preference upon first load, and swapping out resources programmatically.
With Titanium Studio you can write code using Javascript and it convert your code in native objective-c code, native android code, native html 5 code and soon also in windows phone code. It`s the best free cross platform IDE
Upon reviewing your responses, you seem to want a strategy to manage your resources. Since different OS has different resource requirements (screen-size, iOS 2x png for example). The most common strategy is to keep a separate resource structure and setup build target to copy/xcopy replace these image resources before build. Source control + an OSX build server would be most beneficial.
After creating these apps I've found the following way to be the most easiest way to create a similar app.
Android:
1. Select the project from the project explorer sidebar copy it and then paste it. Give it a new name.
Select the new project and then right click > Android Tools > Change Package Name.
Give it a new package name. Eclipse will give you an option to refactor the code, say yes.
Go to res/values and change all strings.
Change the icons and other images.
Go to src click the package and then refactor it. Give it the new package name.
Go to manifest file and rename any old names which might still be lingering.
In the case of a windows application(EXE/DLL), we can change or add language resources within the binary without re-compiling it. Can the same be done in case of an Android application? Is there any editor available to make this happen?
My plan is to develop the application in English and then release it to the sales department, where they will be responsible for the localization of the application without compiling and packaging it into a new APK. I just want to split the development part and localization part of the app.
The correct way to localize is to create a string resource for your base language and then have that localized and reimported into your project for every language that you support.
Much more detail can be found in the Localization documentation.
I don't believe there is a safe/supported way to inject localized strings into your app after it's been built.
No. You can not, because once your apk is signed then modifying it after this (you can always do that as apk is just a zip file) will corrupt the signed binary.
When having multiple languages with your application you have to build them into the application itself. Android uses XML files to store strings used within your application. Android allows you to add language localization files containing local specific strings. You can't do this without recompiling your project so you'll want to do it as a future update or right from the start. But you can't have the marketing department do it, that's just not a good idea.
As others have said, the short answer is no. The long(er) answer is sort of. If you pack all your language resources into remote XML that can be updated from the web, then with a little bit of forethought you can do all sorts of live updates to your app's strings, graphics, etc.
So if you want to use the standard R.string method for everything it will be a little difficult. I think it's possible to do something funky with a dynamic classloader for the assets and static dex classes (basically classes of data with just inline byte arrays that can be decoded after). However that would still require compiling. See Custom Class Loading in Dalvik for more info.
Another approach would be more of a standard Java implementation. Java has a class known as ResourceBundle. You could create a ResourceBundle from a property file (key-value plain text, or even property xml). Then these files could be loaded outside the apk, via a network connection or sdcard or other file type resource and deleted as necessary. You will have to write the loader code for it, but that's going to happen with any solution. This solution will be less performant and outside the standard design methods for android but it will solve the problem being asked to solve. Like you won't be able to use R.string or #string/whatever for any of these resources but I think you may be able to write an adapter to such resources (like your own TextView extension and whatever that would allow all of this). It's a matter mostly of how much work you want to invest in solving this actual problem.
Honestly I would opt for trying to distribute whole apks with only the targeted language if you are trying to save space, but then there is no way to change locale for the app at runtime :(