Android: How to get string in specific locale WITHOUT changing the current locale

Question

Use Case: Logging error messages as displayed to the user.

However you don\'t want to have messages in your log that depend on the locale of the user\'s device. On t

Answer 1

You can save all the strings of the default locale in a Map inside a global class, like Application that is executed when launching the app:

public class DualLocaleApplication extends Application {

    private static Map defaultLocaleString;

    public void onCreate() {
        super.onCreate();
        Resources currentResources = getResources();
        AssetManager assets = currentResources.getAssets();
        DisplayMetrics metrics = currentResources.getDisplayMetrics();
        Configuration config = new Configuration(
                currentResources.getConfiguration());
        config.locale = Locale.ENGLISH;
        new Resources(assets, metrics, config);
        defaultLocaleString = new HashMap();
        Class stringResources = R.string.class;
        for (Field field : stringResources.getFields()) {
            String packageName = getPackageName();
            int resId = getResources().getIdentifier(field.getName(), "string", packageName);
            defaultLocaleString.put(resId, getString(resId));
        }
        // Restore device-specific locale
        new Resources(assets, metrics, currentResources.getConfiguration());
    }

    public static String getStringInDefaultLocale(int resId) {
        return defaultLocaleString.get(resId);
    }

}

This solution is not optimal, but you won't have concurrency problems.