A friend of mine asked me recently to help him to localize his iPhone app. The app is not that big so I agreed and he handled me over his code. Unfortunately NSLocalizedString* macros were nowhere to be seen. I had to go through every file and add them first. Then I was able to use genstrings command on the project files. He told me later that when he started, he had no idea how to do this properly, how to make his app localizable proof. It was his first iOS project.

On top of the above code changes he had some strings hardcoded in XIB files (e.g.: navigation bar titles, tab bar item titles). As some of XIBs are ‘shared’ between two projects I decided to modify the code slightly, rather than create localizable XIBs, so when he changes something in UI he only has to do this once.

With all the code prepared I could finally run genstrings on the project. I’d like to share a few tips on how to use this command.

In a nutshell:

To generate strings from *.m files located in the current folder execute:

To generate strings from *.m files located in the current folder + subfolders execute:

To generate strings from *.m files located in the current folder + subfolders but excluding Folder1 execute:

The basic genstrings syntax is shown below (for the full details please refer to the command’s man page):

genstrings [-a] [-s <routine>] [-q] [-o <outputDir>] sourcefile(s)

Options:

So the basic call can look like this:

The command goes through all *.m files in the current folder, locates lines with NSLocalizedString* macros and creates Localizable.strings file. Subfolders are not being searched in this case, so it’s not very useful if your project is nicely structured.

The following call looks for strings in all *.m files inside the current folder, this time subfolders are included, and creates Localizable.strings file.

I tried this approach on my friend’s project and it failed miserably…

His project uses ShareKit framework which comes with its own Localizable.strings file. It also replaces NSLocalizedString calls with a custom method. This causes the following error:

Just to give you an idea what’s behind this error message take a look at the code below. Genstrings simply does not know how to handle key variable it just parses files.

I ended up doing the following:

This command simply ignores the whole ShareKit folder. To check beforehand what will be parsed you can use the find command:

You can also exclude from the search multiple folders like this:

My friend’s project localization is still in progress. Technical part is almost done. It wasn’t that hard after all… just a bit annoying sometimes. We decided to update ShareKit so it uses its own table (file) for localization and updated the code that was causing problems. In the project itself we decided to use project specific table as well. Just in case someone at some point decides to use or simply use a different framework with its own Localizable.strings.

Now all it’s pretty much about translation and testing… that’s the most difficult part…

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Resources:
1. man genstrings
2. String Resources