Rubustrings

Check the format and consistency of the Localizable.strings files of iOS Apps with multi-language support

Rubustrings is also available for Android here

Usage

It only needs the files to validate as arguments

rubustrings Localizable.strings

Additionally to the filenames, including the option --onlyformat will only assert for the format.

Install

gem install rubustrings

Validators

Currently Rubustrings validates:

The syntaxis of the strings file: Just the format of each line: "key" = "value";
Dynamic values (%@, %d, %ld,...): It checks that the translation include the same set of them than the original string.
Special characters at the beginning or at the end: If the original string begins or ends with a white space,\n or \r it tests that the translation also does.

It also warning on:

Untranslated strings: In missing translations
Translation significantly large: In translations 3 times larger than original string

Example

dcordero@silver:~$ rubustrings Localizable.strings
Processing file: "Localizable.strings"

Localizable.strings:217: error: beginning mismatch: "Tubasa" = " Tubasa";
Localizable.strings:220: error: number of variables mismatch: "Web %@" = "Web";
Localizable.strings:225: error: invalid format: "bad format" = "because of a missing quote;

Result: ✘ Some errors detected

dcordero@silver:~$ rubustrings Localizable.strings
Processing file: "Localizable.strings"

Result: ✓ Strings file validated succesfully

XCode

Rubustrings can also be used as a custom build rule so that all .strings files are automatically validated at build time. This will also attempt to highlight offending lines in XCode.

Just add a new "Run Script Phase" with:

if which rubustrings>/dev/null; then
  find "${SRCROOT}" -type f -name Localizable.strings -print0 | xargs -0 -n1 rubustrings
else
  echo "warning: Rubustrings not installed, download from https://github.com/dcordero/Rubustrings"
fi

rubustrings