dynamically set currency symbol - android

In my app there are a lot of textviews which contain a currency symbol.
Now I want the user to set the symbol. I created a sharedpreference and added there all the existing currencies. Unfortunatelly there are approximately 20 different currencies out there.
Therefor I am struggling how to change dynamically the currency symbol in all my textviews.
I could create for each a big switch case statement (with 20 cases) but this will blow up my code extremly.
Is there another technique how I can change the symbol. E.g. with help of an xml file like the different languages...

The efficient way to do this is by using the Locale and Currency classes.
1.Create the Locale object based on the user input
Example:
Locale locale=new Locale("en", "US");
2.based on this get the currency symbol and display it.
Example:
Currency currency=Currency.getInstance(locale);
String symbol = currency.getSymbol();

I think you will need a formatted string from an xml, something like that from the documentation :
<string name="welcome_messages">Hello, %1$s! You have %2$d new messages.</string>
Then in your activity :
Resources res = getResources();
String text = String.format(res.getString(R.string.welcome_messages), username, mailCount);

Related

Can I set the string resource to a different language programatically?

I have a arabic strings.xml file. I also have an English one.
In my settings activity, I want to be able to change the language used by the user. Like, is there a method like setStringResource(string.xml-ar)?
duplication of Load language specific string from resource?
check this one out.
Of course you must use Locale.AR or something like that for Arabic resource file.
Keep your language specific xml strings in the necessary directories under resources
And change the locale as required
String language = "en";
String country = "US";
Locale locale = new Locale(language , country);

Formatting Strings

People often link the following for explaining formatted strings, Can anyone show me a working example of how to use this?
<string name="welcome_messages">Hello, %1$s! You have %2$d new messages.</string>
Resources res = getResources();
String text = String.format(res.getString(R.string.welcome_messages), username, mailCount);
well the name of the string is "welcome_message", for example you want to add that formated text into component, just edit layout.xml, find your component, and set the text on component to use that string
component < ....
android:text="#string/welcome_message
... />

Best way to store multilanguage values on a database using strings.xml?

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.

localizing application non default strings?

Hi I am trying to localize my android application and I read up on how by reading this tutorial http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/localization.html but after looking through it, I couldn't figure out how to change the language. I have the default values in res/values/strings.xml and I have my other strings in res/values-latin/strings.xml. but I cant figure out how to make my application use the strings in res/values-latin/strings.xml instead of the default. Could someone explain this to me?
How about if someone clicks a change language button how could I inform the application to change all the strings?
Thank you!
Android will do it for you automatically.
When a user runs your application:
The Android system selects which resources to load, based on the
device's locale.
Example:
Suppose that your application's default language is English. Suppose also that you want to localize all the text in your application to French. In this case, you could create two 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.
res/values-fr/strings.xml
Contain French text for all the strings.
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 English title from the res/values/strings.xml file.
If the device is set to French, Android will load French title from the res/values-fr/strings.xml file.
With latin it will not work. You should search alternative method.
My solution in java:
public final class English {
String moon = "Moon";
String earth = "Earth";
String mars = "Mars";
}
public final class Latin {
String moon = "Luna";
String earth = "Terrae";
String mars = "Mars in Latin";
}
Then in your code you can aceess them:
TextView textView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.my_text);
textView.setText( Latin.moon );

string formatting issue in android

I am facing an issue with "string.format" in android application. In my application when the user changes his language preferences from default (english) to any other foreign language (japanese,german etc) the variable string positioning is giving a force close error. Please refer the code below:
temp = String.format(locale,getResources().getString(R.string.temp_string), value, name);
where, temp_string = "The parcel number %1$d belongs to %2$s" for default selection (english)
when other languages are selected in some of them %2$s comes before %1$d . Due to which the the application force closes. Is there a way around to dynamically handle the variable strings(value,name).
I'd do something like:
temp = getResources().getString(R.string.temp_string, value, name);
As you see, getString() method can also receive parameters to format. Then, place different strings resources on different folders. For instance:
res/
values/
string.xml <--- here you put "The parcel number %1$d belongs to %2$s"
values-de/
string.xml <--- here you put "The parcel number %2$d belongs to %1$s"
I'm just giving you an example; I actually do not know how germany order is. I just want to explain what you actually have to try.

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