Download localizable 'strings' files from server

Question

I would like to be able to add/edit languages in my iOS applications. Therefore, I followed the approach in this question, could not get it to work however.

This is what I did:

I created a folder myFolder and dragged the localization folders (en.lproj, ...) from my XCode project into that folder. Then I renamed it to myFolder.bundle. Then I tried to load that whole bundle from a URL like so:

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://192.168.0.12/language_plists/Localizable.bundle"];
NSBundle *bundle = [[NSBundle alloc] initWithURL:url];

which throws the following error:

Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '*** -[NSBundle initWithURL:]: non-file URL argument'

Answer 1

Explicitly it will not work using a non-file URL, because NSBundle only deals with File URLs. At best if you were to download, you would have to download into either Cache or Document locations, and you would have to do so explicitly.

Further, You will need to re-submit the App in order to get many of the benefits of localization, because your App Store entry will only contain languages that can be tested before download.

Answer 2

You have option with this github

Download your json file in your document directory and access its path.

i.e.

//Download the app from server and save it to Document directory
NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSString *path = [[paths lastObject] stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"strings.json"];