Alternative strings for different targets of same App - use NSLocalizedString?

Question

I'm building a version of an App I have already released, but with a few changes. It's not quite a lite/full version relationship, but they're similar enough that I'm using the same project with a different target.

I'd like to reword almost all of the strings I have used in the first version for the new version, and was wondering the best way to approach this. Rather than use #ifdef/#else statements before the declaration of each string, I was thinking of using NSLocalizedStrings. However, the actual language is still the same.

I read in this post that you can set the language yourself, so presumably I can invent my own language and set it to that. But I'm wondering if this is the best way to go about things? Any advice would be most welcome.

Answer 1

You can have multiple string tables for any given language (that is multiple .strings files). When you want a localised string, you can obtain it through:

NSString *str;

// Look up string in Full.strings
str = [[NSBundle mainBundle] localizedStringForKey:@"SomeKey"
                                             value:@"DefaultValue"
                                             table:@"Full"];

// Look up strings in Lite.strings
str = [[NSBundle mainBundle] localizedStringForKey:@"SomeKey"
                                             value:@"DefaultValue"
                                             table:@"Lite"];

Since the table for this method can be variable, you can even switch it at runtime. The above assumes you have a Full.strings table and a Lite.strings table.

Full.strings

"SomeKey" = "This string appears in the full version";

Lite.strings

"SomeKey" = "This string appears in the lite version";

You may not want to ship them together, if that is the case, you can configure your Info.plist to contain the name of the table to use for a specific target (if you add an entry called "TableToUse", you can get it via [[[NSBundle mainBundle] infoDictionary] objectForKey:@"TableToUse"])

Answer 2

NSLocalizedStrings actually is a macro defined as

#define NSLocalizedString(key, comment) \
        [[NSBundle mainBundle] localizedStringForKey:(key) value:@"" table:nil]

With table parameter set as nil, the code will use the default one "Localizable" so if we add another localized string file, we should call [[NSBundle mainBundle] localizedStringForKey:value:table: directly instead of calling NSLocalizedStrings

Answer 3

I'd be very hesitant to invent my own language, but you probably don't need to either. If you use NSLocalizedString in the appropriate places and then use genstrings to extract these to a Localizable.strings (see the docs), then you could simple have two versions of this file and then copy the correct version in each target.