An easy way to dynamically replace Strings of your Android App or provide new languages Over-the-air without needed to publish a new release on Google Play.
Android Resources provide us with an easy way to internationalise our App: a file with all the strings used by our App and a copy of it for every language the App is translated to. Android OS does the rest choosing the proper file depending on device's language.
That is perfect and I don't want to stop using it.
These strings are hardcoded inside our App. If there's a typo or you find a better way to express something, a new version of the App needs to be deployed to include the newer translation. This is a slow process and a poor user experience. We all know users take their time to update an app (if they ever do so) and there's also the time Google Play takes to make a new version of an app available to all users.
Philology doesn't replace the way you are using resources in your current Android Development. Instead, it improves the process by intercepting the value returned from your hardcoded translation files inside of the app and check if there is a newer value in the server. This allows for typo fixing, better wording or even for adding a new language. All in real time, without releasing a new version of the App.
With Philology you could replace hardcoded texts instantly and win time before the new release is done.
Philology use ViewPump library to intercept the view inflate process and reword strings resources. It allows you to use other libraries like Calligraphy that intercept the view inflate process
dependencies {
compile 'com.jcminarro:Philology:2.1.0'
compile 'io.github.inflationx:viewpump:2.0.3'
}Define your PhilologyRepositoryFactory who provides PhilologyRepository according with the selected Locale on the device.
Kotlin:
class App : Application() {
override fun onCreate() {
super.onCreate()
// Init Philology with our PhilologyRepositoryFactory
Philology.init(MyPhilologyRepositoryFactory)
// Add PhilologyInterceptor to ViewPump
// If you are already using Calligraphy you can add both interceptors, there is no problem
ViewPump.init(ViewPump.builder().addInterceptor(PhilologyInterceptor).build())
}
}
object MyPhilologyRepositoryFactory : PhilologyRepositoryFactory {
override fun getPhilologyRepository(locale: Locale): PhilologyRepository? = when (locale.language) {
Locale.ENGLISH.language -> EnglishPhilologyRepository
Locale("es", "ES").language -> SpanishPhilologyRepository
// If we don't support a language we could return null as PhilologyRepository and
// values from the strings resources file will be used
else -> null
}
}
object EnglishPhilologyRepository : PhilologyRepository {
override fun getText(key: String): CharSequence? = when (key) {
"label" -> "New value for the `label` key, it could be fetched from a database or an external API server"
// If we don't want reword a strings we could return null and the value from the string resources file will be used
else -> null
}
override fun getPlural(key: String, quantityString: String): CharSequence? = when ("${key}_$quantityString") {
"plurals_label_one" -> "New value for the `plurals_label` key and `one` quantity keyword"
"plurals_label_other" -> "New value for the `plurals_label` key and `other` quantity keyword"
// If we don't want reword a plural we could return null and the value from the string resources file will be used
else -> null
}
override fun getTextArray(key: String): Array<CharSequence>? = when (key) {
"days" -> arrayOf(
"Monday",
"Tuesday",
"Wednesday",
"Thursday",
"Friday",
"Saturday",
"Saturday"
)
// If we don't want reword a string array we could return null and the value from the string resources file will be used
else -> null
}
}
object SpanishPhilologyRepository : PhilologyRepository { /* Implementation */ }Java:
public class App extends Application {
@Override
public void onCreate() {
super.onCreate();
PhilologyRepositoryFactory repositoryFactory = new MyPhilologyRepositoryFactory();
Philology.INSTANCE.init(repositoryFactory);
ViewPump.init(ViewPump.builder().addInterceptor(PhilologyInterceptor.INSTANCE).build());
}
}
public class MyPhilologyRepositoryFactory extends PhilologyRepositoryFactory {
@Nullable
@Override
public PhilologyRepository getPhilologyRepository(@NotNull Locale locale) {
if (Locale.ENGLISH.getLanguage().equals(locale.getLanguage())) {
return new EnglishPhilologyRepository();
}
return null;
}
}
public class EnglishPhilologyRepository extends PhilologyRepository {
@Nullable
@Override
public CharSequence getText(@NotNull Resource resource) { /* Implementation */}
}Wrap the Activity Context.
Kotlin:
class BaseActivity : AppCompatActivity() {
override fun attachBaseContext(newBase: Context) {
super.attachBaseContext(ViewPumpContextWrapper.wrap(Philology.wrap(newBase)))
}
}Java:
public class BaseActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
@Override
protected void attachBaseContext(Context newBase) {
super.attachBaseContext(ViewPumpContextWrapper.wrap(Philology.INSTANCE.wrap(newBase)));
}
}That is all
Philology allows you to reword your own CustomViews, the only that you need to do is provide an implementation of ViewTransformer that rewords the text fields used by your CustomView. The Context used to inflate your CustomView is already wrapped by the library, so, you can assign the @StringRes used on the .xml file that will be provided on the reword() method.
Kotlin:
object MyCustomViewTransformer : ViewTransformer {
override fun reword(view: View, attributeSet: AttributeSet): View = view.apply {
when (this) {
is MyCustomView -> reword(attributeSet)
}
}
private fun MyCustomView.reword(attributeSet: AttributeSet) {
@StringRes val textResId = context.getStringResourceId(attributeSet, R.styleable.MyCustomView_text)
if (textResId > 0) setTextToMyCustomView(textResId)
}
}Java:
public class MyCustomViewTransformer extends ViewTransformer {
private static String MY_CUSTOM_ATTRIBUTE_NAME = "text";
@NotNull
@Override
public View reword(@NotNull View view, @NotNull AttributeSet attributeSet) {
if (view instanceof MyCustomView) {
MyCustomView myCustomView = (MyCustomView) view;
int textResId = getStringResourceId(myCustomView.getContext(), attributeSet, R.styleable.MyCustomView_text);
if (textResId > 0) {
myCustomView.setTextToMyCustomView(textResId);
}
}
return view;
}
}After you implement your ViewTransformer you need to provide it to Philology injecting a ViewTransformerFactory by the init() method
Kotlin:
class App : Application() {
override fun onCreate() {
super.onCreate()
Philology.init(MyPhilologyRepositoryFactory, MyViewTransformerFactory)
ViewPump.init(ViewPump.builder().addInterceptor(PhilologyInterceptor.INSTANCE).build());
}
}
object MyViewTransformerFactory : ViewTransformerFactory{
override fun getViewTransformer(view: View): ViewTransformer = when (view) {
is MyCustomView -> MyCustomViewTransformer
else -> null
}
}Java:
public class App extends Application {
@Override
public void onCreate() {
super.onCreate();
PhilologyRepositoryFactory repositoryFactory = new MyPhilologyRepositoryFactory();
ViewTransformerFactory viewTransformerFactory = new MyCustomViewTransformerFactory();
Philology.INSTANCE.init(repositoryFactory, viewTransformerFactory);
ViewPump.init(ViewPump.builder().addInterceptor(PhilologyInterceptor.INSTANCE).build());
}
}
public class MyCustomViewTransformerFactory implements ViewTransformerFactory {
@Nullable
@Override
public ViewTransformer getViewTransformer(@NotNull View view) {
if (view instanceof MyCustomView) {
return new MyViewTransformer();
}
return null;
}
}Feel free to add any useful feature to the library, we will be glad to improve it with your help. I'd love to hear about your use case too, especially if it's not covered perfectly.
- Jc Miñarro - [email protected]
Copyright 2018 Jc Miñarro
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.
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