Lingo

Swift code generation for Localizable.strings files

Xcode has great support for localizing text in apps. However, one little typo can easily prevent your localized text from being shown. What's worse—you won't get a compile time error. You have to ready all the text in your app at runtime to verify if everything worked correctly.

Localizable.strings

"SettingsViewController.Title" = "Settings";

SettingsViewController.swift

init() {
	...
	title = NSLocalizedString("SettingsViewController.Title", comment: "")
}

If you accidentally typed title = NSLocalizedString("SettingsViewController.itle", comment: "") then at runtime your title would display as SettingsViewController.itle, not Settings like you expected.

We can do better!

Lingo is a super small & fast command line app that you setup in Xcode to run before the compile phase. It will parse your Localizable.strings file and generate a Lingo.swift file, that contains namespaced constants that you can use, in place of NSLocalizedString(:comment:), and have full compiletime errors, as well as autocompletion.

title = NSLocalizedString("SettingsViewController.Title", comment: "") becomes title = Lingo.SettingsViewController.title.

How does it work?

Lingo reads your Localizable.strings file and generates a Swift code file, that has constants that call the correct NSLocalizedString(:comment:) for each. So if your Localizable.strings looks like the one at the top of this readme, your Lingo.swift would look like:

// This file is autogenerated by Lingo from your localized strings file.

import Foundation

struct Lingo {
    struct SettingsViewController {
        /// "Settings"
        static let title = NSLocalizedString("SettingsViewController.Title", comment:"")
    }
}

The localized value that a constant represents is in the comments for each constant, so you can easily tell what a constant will produce just by Option-Clicking on it.

In your Localizable.strings file, you need to namespace your keys in the format <SomeGrouping>.<Key>. When you do this, all keys with the same SomeGrouping will be put into a struct together. The main restriction is that you should choose grouping & key values that can be represented in Swift as a struct name and variable name. Currently Lingo doesn't sanatize names before generating the Swift (PRs welcome). Since everything is done at compile time, you will know immeadiately if something didn't work.

Installation

Download the latest release, or grab the source and build it your self. While you can just install the Lingo CLI tool locally, it's better if all develpers & CI that access your repo have access to it. So we recommend making a folder in your repo for shared tooling, and placing Lingo in there.

Open your app in Xcode, select the app's target, and go to Build Phases. Tap the + at the top left of the build phases and choose New Run Script Phase. Give the script a descriptive name like Lingo: Generate structs from Localizable.strings, then drag the phase so that it is somewhere before Compile Sources (x items). Inside the main script area you should put something like ./<Path to Lingo>/Lingo --input Hub/en.lproj/Localizable.strings --output Hub/Lingo.swift, where you should use the Localizable.strings that you use for your development language.

Contributing

Check out our contribution guide