Air Strings

Air Strings is a command-line tool for translating localizable strings in Google Sheets.

1. Prepare localization as Localizable.strings

Tis is usually done in Xcode or AppCode. The preferred format is "key" = "value"; // comment 🤷‍♂️

2. “Push” Localizable.strings to Google Sheets

The command like airstrings push --path en/Localizable.strings will upload key-value pairs with their comments into the Google spreadsheet.

3. Translate strings using Google Sheets

Then you translate strings into any language. By the way, Google Sheets are perfect for collaboration!

3. “Pull” translations as Localizable.strings

Once translation is done, download all strings back using a command like airstrings pull --path ru/Localizable.strings.

🎉 Done!

Building

In order to build an executable you need a client identifier and a secret for Google Sheets API. Please follow instructions at https://developers.google.com/sheets/api/guides/authorizing#OAuth2Authorizing to generate something like this:

Once generated, copy and replace string values for CLIENT_ID and CLIENT_SECRET in the following script:

git clone git@github.com:CirkusApp/airstrings.git
cd airstrings

CLIENT_ID=1234567890-abcdefg0987654321.apps.googleusercontent.com
CLIENT_SECRET=abcdefgh123456789
echo "GCC_PREPROCESSOR_DEFINITIONS = \$(inherited) \
    AIR_GOOGLE_SHEETS_CLIENT_IDENTIFIER=$CLIENT_ID \
    AIR_GOOGLE_SHEETS_CLIENT_SECRET=$CLIENT_SECRET" > \
    AirSecrets.xcconfig

swift package generate-xcodeproj \
    --xcconfig-overrides AirSecrets.xcconfig
xcodebuild \
    -project airstrings.xcodeproj \
    -target airstrings \
    -configuration Release

Running

At the moment Air Strings is available only after building manually:

build/Release/airstrings <command> [options]

Once the app is ready for public, we’ll probably publish at Brew.

Roadmap

Renew access token when it’s expired
Improve error messages by overriding AirStrings.Error.localizedDescription
Write Makefile with swift build and .xcconfig passed via -Xcc
Release a binary for public and implement brew install airstrings
Use OysterKit for parsing .strings
Add support for input configuration to parse Java .properties files using OysterKit
Open the website Cirkus Open Source at https://cirkusapp.github.io
Move Air Strings website to https://cirkusapp.github.io/airstrings
Maybe simplify API URL building by using URITemplate.swift
Configure output format using Stencil or the like

Thanks

SwiftCLI — cool processor for command-line interfaces
PathKit — nice helpers for writing and reading local files
OAuthSwift — native library for Google Auth and Requests

Contact

Vadim @Shpakovski.

Copyright

License

Air Strings is licensed under MIT License.