Is it possible to create translateable arbitrary XML resources in Android Studio?

Question

I want to create an app which asks the user questions, scores the answers and potentially react to them presenting subsequent questions. For this I thought of something like the following XML in res/xml/questions.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<questions>
    <question id="000" category="2">
        <text>Yes or no?</text>
        <answers>
            <choice id="0" score="+5">Yes</choice>
            <choice id="1" score="-5">No</choice>
        </answers>
    </question>
    <question id="010" category="1">
        <parent id="000" choice="0"/>
        <text>Whats my question?</text>
        <answers>
            <choice id="0" score="-5">Shut up.</choice>
            <choice id="1" score="0">I don't care.</choice>
            <choice id="2" score="+5">I like your attitude!</choice>
        </answers>
    </question>
</questions>

I want to support multiple languages. How can I translate the contents of <text> and <choice> without redefining the same logic in different XMLs? (Or should I abandon the XML approach altogether?)

CommonsWare CommonsWare · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-16T20:07:15

Here are some options:

Option #1: Have res/xml/questions.xml and other variants of that XML for different languages (e.g., res/xml-es/questions.xml, res/xml-de/questions.xml, res/xml-zh/questions.xml)

Option #2: Where you have the English strings, instead have values that map to string resources. So, res/xml/questions.xml might look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<questions>
    <question id="000" category="2">
        <text>question_000</text>
        <answers>
            <choice id="0" score="+5">question_000_choice_0</choice>
            <choice id="1" score="-5">question_000_choice_1</choice>
        </answers>
    </question>
    <question id="010" category="1">
        <parent id="000" choice="0"/>
        <text>question_010</text>
        <answers>
            <choice id="0" score="-5">question_010_choice_0</choice>
            <choice id="1" score="0">question_010_choice_1</choice>
            <choice id="2" score="+5">question_010_choice_2</choice>
        </answers>
    </question>
</questions>

Then you would have string resources for question_000, question_000_choice_0, and so on. When you parse the XML, you then use getIdentifier() on a Resources object to look up the string resource ID corresponding with something like question_000_choice_0.

Option #3: Have the XML simply describe the basics:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<questions>
    <question id="000" category="2">
        <answers>
            <choice id="0" score="+5" />
            <choice id="1" score="-5" />
        </answers>
    </question>
    <question id="010" category="1">
        <parent id="000" choice="0"/>
        <answers>
            <choice id="0" score="-5" />
            <choice id="1" score="0" />
            <choice id="2" score="+5" />
        </answers>
    </question>
</questions>

You would still have string resources for question_000, question_000_choice_0, and so on. However, instead of having those names in the XML, you would just generate them from the question and choice IDs.

Is it possible to create translateable arbitrary XML resources in Android Studio?

1 Answers