Locheck

An Xcode and Android localization file validator. Make sure your .strings, .stringsdict, and strings.xml files do not have any errors!

What does it do?

Locheck can perform many kinds of checks on localization files. The simplest one is making sure all strings appear in both the base language and translations, but it can also make sure all your format specifiers are consistent, even in .stringsdict files.

Consider this string:

"Send %d donuts to %@" = "%@ to donuts %d send";

<!-- values/strings.xml -->
<string name="send_donuts">Send %d donuts to %s</string>
<!-- values-translation/strings.xml -->
<string name="send_donuts">%s to donuts %d send</string>

The translation reads naturally on its own, but this would crash your app when iOS or Android tries to format a number as a string and a string as a number. Instead, the translation should look like this:

"Send %d donuts to %@" = "%2$@ to donuts %1$d send";

<!-- values-translation/strings.xml -->
<string name="send_donuts">%2$s to donuts %1$d send</string>

Locheck will make sure you get it right.

In the example above, the key happens to be equal to the base translation. But you might have special cases where you manually define your string in Localizable.strings, so the key's format string doesn't match the value:

// in en.lproj/Localizable.strings:
"send-donuts" = "Send %d donuts to %@";

// in backwards.lproj/Localizable.strings:
"send-donuts" = "%@ to donuts %d send";

In these cases, Locheck will use the base translation's value (not its key) as the authoritative string, and would catch the error in the example above.

Installation

Manual

git clone [email protected]:Asana/locheck.git
cd locheck
make install

Using Mint

mint install Asana/locheck
mint run locheck [...]

# or link it to /usr/local/bin
mint install Asana/locheck --link
locheck [...]

Locheck is not yet popular enough to be in homebrew/core and we haven't created a tap yet.

Usage

There are a few ways to invoke locheck depending on how much magic you want. In all cases, Locheck will write to stderr for Xcode integration, and stdout for a human-readable summary. Pull requests for additional output formats will probably be accepted.

discoverlproj

The simplest way to use Locheck with Xcode is to use discoverlproj and point to a directory containing all your .lproj files:

locheck discoverlproj "MyApp/Supporting Files" --base en # use English as the base language

If you use a language besides English as your base, you'll need to pass it as an argument as shown in the example. Locheck does not try to read your xcodeproj file to figure it out.

discovervalues

The simplest way to use Locheck on Android is to use discovervalues and point to a directory containing all your values[-*] directories, i.e. your res/ directory.

locheck discovervalues ./app/src/main/res

Other ways

Run locheck --help to see a list of all commands. The rest of the commands just let you directly compare individual files of different types.

Example output

> locheck discovervalues $ANDROID/app/src/main/res --ignore key_missing_from_translation --ignore key_missing_from_base
Discovering values[-*]/strings.xml files in /.../app/src/main/res
Source of truth: /.../app/src/main/res/values/strings.xml
Translations to check: 12
/.../app/src/main/res/values-de/strings.xml:242: error: Translation of 'could_not_mark_as_milestone' includes arguments that don't exist in the source: task_name (string_has_extra_arguments)
/.../app/src/main/res/values-de/strings.xml:899: warning: 'organization_required_mfa_help_text' does not include argument(s): authy_url, duo_mobile_url, microsoft_authenticator_url (phrase_has_missing_arguments)
/.../app/src/main/res/values-ko/strings.xml:1403: error: Translation of 'what_are_a_few_tasks_you_have_to_do_for_project_name' includes arguments that don't exist in the source: projectName (string_has_extra_arguments)
/.../app/src/main/res/values-ko/strings.xml:1426: warning: 'created_video_phrase_template' does not include argument(s): author_name (phrase_has_missing_arguments)
[...]

Summary:
/.../app/src/main/res/values-ko/strings.xml
    could_not_mark_as_milestone:
        ERROR: Translation of 'could_not_mark_as_milestone' includes arguments that don't exist in the source: task_name
    created_video_phrase_template:
        WARNING: 'created_video_phrase_template' does not include argument(s): author_name
        ERROR: Translation of 'created_video_phrase_template' includes arguments that don't exist in the source: userName1
    organization_required_mfa_help_text:
        WARNING: 'organization_required_mfa_help_text' does not include argument(s): authy_url, duo_mobile_url, microsoft_authenticator_url
    what_are_a_few_tasks_you_have_to_do_for_project_name:
        WARNING: 'what_are_a_few_tasks_you_have_to_do_for_project_name' does not include argument(s): project_name
        ERROR: Translation of 'what_are_a_few_tasks_you_have_to_do_for_project_name' includes arguments that don't exist in the source: projectName
[...]
20 warnings, 29 errors
Ignored key_missing_from_translation, key_missing_from_base
Errors found

Contributing

GitHub issues and pull requests are very welcome! Please format your code with swiftformat Sources Tests before opening your PR, otherwise tests will fail and we cannot merge your branch. We also run SwiftLint to help ensure best practices.

The simplest way to install SwiftFormat and SwiftLint is to use Mint:

brew install mint
mint bootstrap --link`

You can then run both tools locally:

swiftformat Sources Tests
swiftlint lint --quiet

Further reading

• Localizing Strings that Contain Plurals
• Stringsdict File Format