Identifying RTL language in Android

Question

Is there a way to identify RTL (right-to-left) language, apart from testing language code against all RTL languages?

Since API 17+ allows several resources for RTL a

Answer 1

For more precise control over your app UI in both LTR and RTL mode, Android 4.2 includes the following new APIs to help manage View components:

android:layoutDirection — attribute for setting the direction of a component's layout.
android:textDirection — attribute for setting the direction of a component's text.
android:textAlignment — attribute for setting the alignment of a component's text.
getLayoutDirectionFromLocale() — method for getting the Locale-specified direction

Thus getLayoutDirectionFromLocale() should help you out. Refer the sample code here : https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base.git/+/3fb824bae3322252a68c1cf8537280a5d2bd356d/core/tests/coretests/src/android/util/LocaleUtilTest.java

Answer 2

When building library you also always need to check if application is supporting RTL by using

(getApplicationInfo().flags &= ApplicationInfo.FLAG_SUPPORTS_RTL) != 0

When application is running on RTL locale, but it isn't declared in manifest android:supportsRtl="true" then it is running in LTR mode.

Answer 3

Thanks to all.

If you look at the code of LayoutUtil.getLayoutDirectionFromLocale() (and, I assume Confuiguration.getLayoutDirection() as well), it ends up with analysing the starting letter of locale display name, using Character.getDirectionality.

Since Character.getDirectionality was around from Android 1, the following code will be compatible with all Android releases (even those, not supporting RTL correctly :)):

public static boolean isRTL() {
    return isRTL(Locale.getDefault());
}

public static boolean isRTL(Locale locale) {
     return
        Character.getDirectionality(locale.getDisplayName().charAt(0)) ==
            Character.DIRECTIONALITY_RIGHT_TO_LEFT; 
}

Answer 4

You can detect if a string is RTL/LTR with Bidi. Example:

import java.text.Bidi;

Bidi bidi = new Bidi( title, Bidi.DIRECTION_DEFAULT_LEFT_TO_RIGHT );

if( bidi.isLeftToRight() ) {
   // it's LTR
} else {
   // it's RTL
}

Answer 5

I gathered many information and finally made my own, hopefully complete, RTLUtils class.

It allows to know if a given Locale or View is 'RTL' :-)

package com.elementique.shared.lang;

import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.Locale;
import java.util.Set;

import android.support.v4.view.ViewCompat;
import android.view.View;

public class RTLUtils
{

    private static final Set<String> RTL;

    static
    {
        Set<String> lang = new HashSet<String>();
        lang.add("ar"); // Arabic
        lang.add("dv"); // Divehi
        lang.add("fa"); // Persian (Farsi)
        lang.add("ha"); // Hausa
        lang.add("he"); // Hebrew
        lang.add("iw"); // Hebrew (old code)
        lang.add("ji"); // Yiddish (old code)
        lang.add("ps"); // Pashto, Pushto
        lang.add("ur"); // Urdu
        lang.add("yi"); // Yiddish
        RTL = Collections.unmodifiableSet(lang);
    }

    public static boolean isRTL(Locale locale)
    {
        if(locale == null)
            return false;

        // Character.getDirectionality(locale.getDisplayName().charAt(0))
        // can lead to NPE (Java 7 bug)
        // https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-6992272?page=com.atlassian.streams.streams-jira-plugin:activity-stream-issue-tab
        // using hard coded list of locale instead
        return RTL.contains(locale.getLanguage());
    }

    public static boolean isRTL(View view)
    {
        if(view == null)
            return false;

        // config.getLayoutDirection() only available since 4.2
        // -> using ViewCompat instead (from Android support library)
        if (ViewCompat.getLayoutDirection(view) == View.LAYOUT_DIRECTION_RTL)
        {
            return true;
        }
        return false;
    }
}

Answer 6

Easily you can use this :

 if (getWindow().getDecorView().getLayoutDirection()== View.LAYOUT_DIRECTION_RTL) {
        // The view has RTL layout
    } else {
        // The view has LTR layout
    }