Localizing with different element count

Question

I'd like to give my users a warm welcome, when they are opening my application. So I want to have different sentences to show them randomly. The count of messages differs in each language.

What is the preferred way to solve this problem?

My ideas:

Save the count also in the strings file -> Don't like this idea, because this must be maintained "welcomeCount" = "5"; "welcomeN" = "Hi....";
Seperating the messages -> Don't like this idea, because you have to mind this "welcomeMessages" = "Hey there...|MessageN";

Anyone out there with an idea to solve this issue in a elegant manner?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 04 '12 at 19:18

You can store the welcome messages in localized property lists.

In Xcode, go to File -> New -> File ...
Choose the Resource -> Property List template and for example "Welcome.plist" as file name.
Select Welcome.plist in Xcode and change the type of the root object from Dictionary to Array.
Select Welcome.plist, to go the File Inspector and click on "Make Localized ...". Then select the localizations that you want for the Welcome.plist., for example English and German.
Now you have a Welcome.plist for each language which you can edit separately.
To add strings, click on the "+" symbol in the property list.

In your program, you can load the list easily with

NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"Welcome" ofType:@"plist"];
NSArray *messages = [NSArray arrayWithContentsOfFile:path];

This loads the "right" properly list, depending on the user's language, into the array messages. You can choose a random message with

int idx = arc4random_uniform([messages count]);
NSString *msg = [messages objectAtIndex:idx];

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 04 '12 at 19:03

To minimize maintenance, you can use a binary search to find out how many variations are available. Say you have the following in your Localizable.strings:

"Welcome_0" = "Hello";
"Welcome_1" = "Hi";
"Welcome_2" = "What up";
"Welcome_3" = "Howdy";

You can find the count using:

int lower = 0, upper = 10;
while (lower < upper - 1) {
    int mid = (lower + upper) / 2;
    NSString *key = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Welcome_%i", mid];
    BOOL isAvailable = ![key isEqualToString:NSLocalizedString(key, @"")];
    if (isAvailable) lower = mid;
    else upper = mid;
}

Finally select you random message using:

NSString *key = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Welcome_%i", rand() % upper];
NSString *welcome = NSLocalizedString(key, @"");

Sure,... I am hoping, that there is something like `"welcomeMessages" = ["a", "b", "n"];` Getting the value(s) via NSLocalizedString (randomly) or NSLocalizedArray... So far, thx for your answer. :) — Sascha Manuel Hameister, Oct 04 '12 at 19:15

Localizing with different element count

2 Answers2