strings-check: Android translators’ helper tool
Posted by: Borszczuk in Android, Computers, tags: Android, helper, PHP, tool, translator
While working on some Android projects I faced small issue related to localisation files. Since there’s no built-in mechanism that helps you keep all these files in sync I crafted small PHP command line script to help me keep my translations up to date with english base strings. Since this seems to be common problem for other translators as well, I decided to share my script. Feel free to use it as you want. I do not mind if you credit me anyway 
For this article I assume you know what I talk about, what are localisation files and where they do exists and why. As for the script – it generally takes two strings.xml files and cross-checks them to find if there’s any missing (present in base file but not in translated) or obsolete (present in translation file but no longer in base) strings. Both files are passed as arguments while calling the script – first strings.xml is BASE (it shall be that one you try to sync to, so in general case values/strings.xml) the other one is your LANG (translated) file. In my case values-pl/strings.xml. To check these files do the following in the terminal:
./strings-check.php values/strings.xml values-pl/strings.xml
It will give you the output like this:
Missing in <LANG> (You need to add these to your file) File: values-de/strings.xml ------------------------------------------------------ show_full_header_action hide_full_header_action recreating_account
Missing in EN (you probably shall remove it from your <LANG> file) File: values/strings.xml ------------------------------------------------------------------ provider_note_yahoo
Summary ---------------- BASE file: 'values/strings.xml' LANG file: 'values-de/strings.xml'
3 missing strings in your LANG file. 1 obsolete strings in your LANG file.
Notes to non really techies translators:
- I use Debian so PHP here is in /usr/bin/php. On your distro it may be /usr/local/bin/php or elsewhere (do ‘which php’ to find out). Either update 1st line in the script or just type “php” while calling this script (php ./strings-check.php values/strings.xml values-pl/strings.xml)
- The script is written in PHP and I use it from command line (however it will work if you use it with webbrowser, however it needs some tweaks to get args then.
Get the script from here: strings-check.zip
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