Sunday, November 21, 2010

Finding the users language settings via code



We've seen before how easy it is to reference difference resources based on the users language settings, but that was more-or-less managed by the Android framework itself.

What if you want to programmatically make decisions in your code based on what the user's language and local settings are?

Turns out, it's very easy, and here's how:
(this example assumes you have a TextView in your layout.main called tvLocale)

package com.Bluemongo.LanguageTest;

import java.util.Locale;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class LanguageTest extends Activity 
{
 @Override
 public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) 
 {
  super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
  setContentView(R.layout.main);
        
  TextView tvLocale = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.tvLocale);
        
       if (Locale.getDefault().getLanguage().equals("en")) 
        {tvLocale.setText("you're speaking English");}

        if (Locale.getDefault().getLanguage().equals("de")) 
        {tvLocale.setText("you're speaking German");}
        
        if (Locale.getDefault().getLanguage().equals("fr")) 
        { tvLocale.setText("you're speaking French");}   
        
  }
}


.. Told you it was easy.