nslocalized 0.2.0

Reads and writes Mac OS X .strings files

What is this?

It’s a package of Python code for manipulating Mac OS X/iOS .strings files, which has been written carefully to support all of the character escapes and Unicode characters you might wish to use.

How do I use it?

To read a .strings file:

>>> from nslocalized import StringTable
>>> st = StringTable.read('/path/to/my/Localized.strings')

or to read the strings into an existing StringTable:

>>> st.read('/path/to/my/other/Localized.strings')

To write a new .strings file:

>>> st.write('/path/to/my/new/Localized.strings')

By default, that uses host-endian UTF-16, but you can specify the encoding:

>>> st.write('/path/to/my/new/Localized.strings', encoding='utf_8')

Each string is represented by a LocalizedString object; given the strings file:

/* My important string */
"Very important" = "Très important";

in a StringTable st:

>>> ls = st.lookup('Very important')
>>> print ls.source
Very important
>>> print ls.target
Très important
>>> print ls.comment
My important string

You can also add entries to a StringTable with:

>>> st.store(LocalizedString('One', 'Uno'))

or with a comment:

>>> st.store(LocalizedString('MB', 'Mo', 'Megabytes'))

Finally, for simple access you can use the [] operator:

>>> st['GB'] = 'Go'
>>> print st['MB']
Mo

In some cases you might want to load the string table without processing escapes. In that case, you can do:

>>> st = StringTable.read('/path/to/my/Localized.strings',
process_escapes=False)

which will read the table without any escape processing taking place. Obviously if you read a table in this form, you will also want to write it without escaping:

>>> st.write('/path/to/my/new/Localized.strings', escape_strings=False)