Localio

Localio generates automatically localizable files for many platforms like Rails, Android, iOS, Java .properties files and JSON files using a centralized spreadsheet as source. The spreadsheet can be in Google Drive or a simple local Excel file.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'localio'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install localio

Usage

You have to create a custom file, Locfile, similar to Rakefile or Gemfile, with some information for this to work. Also you must have some spreadsheet with a particular format, either in Google Drive, CSV files or in Excel (XLS or XLSX) format.

In your Locfile directory you can then execute

localize

and your localizable files will be created with the parameters specified in the Locfile.

You can also specify in the first parameter a file with another name, and it will work as well.

The Spreadsheet

You will need a little spreadsheet with all the localization literals and their intended keys for internal use while coding.

There is a basic example in this Google Drive link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmX_w4-5HkOgdFFoZ19iSUlRSERnQTJ4NVZiblo2UXc&usp=sharing. You just have to duplicate and save to your account, or download and save it as XLS file.

NOTE Localio will only search for translations on the first worksheet of the spreadsheet.

Locfile

A minimal Locfile example could be:

platform :ios

output_path 'my_output_path/'

source :xlsx,
       :path => 'my_translations.xlsx'

This would connect localio to your Google Drive and process the spreadsheet with title "[Localizables] My Project!".

The list of possible commands is this.

Option	Description	Default
platform	(Req.) Target platform for the localizable files.	nil
source	(Req.) Information on where to find the spreadsheet w/ the info	nil
output_path	(Req.) Target directory for the localizables.	out/
formatting	The formatter that will be used for key processing.	smart
except	Filter applied to the keys, process all except the matches.	nil
only	Filter applied to the keys, only process the matches.	nil

Supported platforms

• :android for Android string.xml files. The output_path needed is the path for the res directory.
• :ios for iOS Localizable.strings files. The output_path needed is base directory where en.lproj/ and such would go. Also creates header file with Objective-C macros.
• :swift for iOS Localizable.strings files. The output_path needed is base directory where en.lproj/ and such would go. Also creates source file with Swift constants.
• :rails for Rails YAML files. The output_path needed is your config/locales directory.
• :json for an easy JSON format for localizables. The output_path is yours to decide :)
• :java_properties for .properties files used mainly in Java. Files named language_(lang).properties will be generated in output_path's root directory.
• :resx for .resx files used by .NET projects, e.g. Windows Forms, Windows Phone or Xamarin.

Extra platform parameters

avoid_lang_downcase

By default, language codes are downcased. We can set :avoid_lang_downcase => true to avoid this behavior.

iOS - :ios, :swift

We can opt-out from the constants/macros. We will simple need to add :create_constants => false. By default, if omitted, the constants will be always created. It's a good practice to have a compile-time check of the existence of your keys; but if you don't like it it's fine.

Example:

platform :ios, :create_constants => false
# ... rest of your Locfile ...

ResX - :resx

The default resource file name is Resources.resx. We can set a different base name using the :resource_file option.

# Generate WebResources.resx, WebResources.es.resx, etc.
platform :resx, :resource_file => "WebResources" 

# ... rest of your Locfile ...

Supported sources

Google Drive

source :google_drive will get the translation strings from Google Drive.

You will have to provide some required parameters too. Here is a list of all the parameters.

Option	Description
:spreadsheet	(Req.) Title of the spreadsheet you want to use. Can be a partial match.
:sheet	(Req.) Index number (starting with 0) or name of the sheet w/ the data
:login	DEPRECATED This is deprecated starting version 0.1.0. Please remove it.
:password	DEPRECATED This is deprecated starting version 0.1.0. Please remove it.
:client_id	(Req.) Your Google CLIENT ID.
:client_secret	(Req.) Your Google CLIENT SECRET.

Please take into account that from version 0.1.0 of Localio onwards we are using Google OAuth2 authentication, as the previous one with login/password has been deprecated by Google and cannot be access anymore starting April 20th 2015.

Setting it up is a bit of a pain, although it is only required the first time and can be shared by all your projects:

1. You have to create a new project in Google Developers Console for using Drive API. You can do that here.
2. After it is created you will be redirected to the credentials section (if not, just select under APIs and authentication in the sidebar the Credentials section), where you will click in the button labeled Create new client ID.
3. Select the third option, the one that says something like Installed Application.
4. Fill the form with whatever you want. For example, you could put Localio as the product name (the only thing required there).
5. Select again the third option, Installed Application, and in the platform selector select the last one, Others.
6. You will have all the necessary information in the next screen: Client ID and Client Secret.

After doing all this, you are ready to add :client_id and :client_secret fields to your Locfile source. It will look somewhat like this at this stage:

source :google_drive,
       :spreadsheet => '[Localizables] My Project',
       :client_id => 'XXXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX.apps.googleusercontent.com',
       :client_secret => 'asdFFGGhjKlzxcvbnm'

Then, the first time you run it, you will be prompted to follow some instructions. You will be asked to open a website, where you will be prompted for permission to use the Drive API. After you allow it, you will be given an authorization code, which you will have to paste in your terminal screen when prompted.

NOTE A hidden file, called .localio.yml, will be created in your Locfile directory. You should add that file to your ignored resources in your repository, aka the .gitignore file.

NOTE As it is a very bad practice to put your sensitive information in a plain file, specially when you would want to upload your project to some repository, it is VERY RECOMMENDED that you use environment variables in here. Ruby syntax is accepted so you can use ENV['CLIENT_SECRET'] and ENV['CLIENT_ID'] in here.

For example, this.

source :google_drive,
       :spreadsheet => '[Localizables] My Project!',
       :client_id => ENV['CLIENT_ID'],
       :client_secret => ENV['CLIENT_SECRET']

And in your .bashrc (or .bash_profile, .zshrc or whatever), you could export those environment variables like this:

export CLIENT_ID="your_client_id"
export CLIENT_SECRET="your_client_secret"

XLS

source :xls will use a local XLS file. In the parameter's hash you should specify a :path. You may specify a sheet parameter, otherwise the first sheet will be used.

Option	Description
:path	(Req.) Path for your XLS file.
:sheet	(Optional) Index number (starting with 0) or name of the sheet w/ the data

source :xls,
       :path => 'YourExcelFileWithTranslations.xls',
       :sheet => 'Master Translation Data'

XLSX

source :xlsx will use a local XLSX file. In the parameter's hash you should specify a :path. You may specify a sheet parameter, otherwise the first sheet will be used.

Option	Description
:path	(Req.) Path for your XLSX file.
:sheet	(Req.) Index number (starting with 0) or name of the sheet w/ the data

source :xlsx,
       :path => 'YourExcelFileWithTranslations.xlsx',
       :sheet => 'Master Translation Data'

CSV

source :csv will use a local CSV file. In the parameter's hash you should specify a :path.

Option	Description
:path	(Req.) Path for your CSV file.
:column_separator	By default it is ',', but you can change it with this parameter

In this example we specify tabs as separators for translation columns. The :column_separator is not needed if the separator is a comma and could be removed.

source :csv,
       :path => 'YourCSVTranslations.csv',
       :column_separator => '\t'

Key formatters

If you don't specify a formatter for keys, :smart will be used.

• :none for no formatting.
• :snake_case for snake case formatting (ie "this_kind_of_key").
• :camel_case for camel case formatting (ie "ThisKindOfKey").
• :smart use a different formatting depending on the platform.

Here you have some examples on how the behavior would be:

Platform	"App name"	"ANOTHER_KIND_OF_KEY"
:none	App name	ANOTHER_KIND_OF_KEY
:snake_case	app_name	another_kind_of_key
:camel_case	appName	AnotherKindOfKey
:smart (ios/swift)	_App_name	_Another_kind_of_key
:smart (android)	app_name	another_kind_of_key
:smart (ruby)	app_name	another_kind_of_key
:smart (json)	app_name	another_kind_of_key
:smart (resx)	AppName	AnotherKindOfKey

Example of use:

formatting :camel_case

Normally you would want a smart formatter, because it is adjusted (or tries to) to the usual code conventions of each platform for localizable strings.

Advanced options

Filtering content

We can establish filters to the keys by using regular expressions.

The exclusions are managed with the except command. For example, if we don't want to include the translations where the key has the "[a]" string, we could include this in the Locfile.

except :keys => '[\[][a][\]]'

We can filter inversely too, with the command only. For example, if we only want the translations that contain the '[a]' token, we should use:

only :keys => '[\[][a][\]]'

Overriding default language

This only makes sense with platform :android and platform :resx at the moment. If we want to override (for whatever reason) the default language flag in the source spreadsheet, we can use :override_default => 'language'.

For example, if we wanted to override the default (english) and use spanish instead, we could do this:

platform :android, :override_default => 'es'

Contributing

Please read the contributing guide.