poe2arb

poe2arb is a CLI tool that lets the POEditor work with Flutter's native localization solution (flutter gen-l10n).

Installation

You can download latest or historical binary straight from the GitHub releases artifacts or using Homebrew:

brew tap leancodepl/poe2arb
brew install poe2arb

POEDITOR_TOKEN

The poe2arb poe command requires a POEditor read-only API token. It's available in Account settings > API access.

You can export this token in your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc so that it's always available:

export POEDITOR_TOKEN="YOUR_API_TOKEN_HERE"

Usage

poe2arb operates on POEditor's JSON (not JSON key-value) export file format.

Full POEditor integration

poe2arb poe command is your Swiss Army Knife enabling integrating POEditor into your Flutter workspace in one command:

1. Fetches all project languages from API.
2. Downloads JSON exports for all languages from API.
3. Converts JSON exports to ARB format.
4. Saves converted ARB files to the output directory.

Options

If a command-line flag is not specified, an environment variable is used, then l10n.yaml option, then it fallbacks to default.

Description	Flag	Env	l10n.yaml
Required. POEditor project ID. It is visible in the URL of the project on POEditor website.	-p --project-id		poeditor-project-id
Required. POEditor API read-only access token. Available in Account settings > API access.	-t --token	POEDITOR_TOKEN
ARB files output directory. Defaults to current directory.	-o --output-dir		arb-dir
Exported languages override. Defaults to using all languages from POEditor.	--langs		poeditor-langs
Term prefix, used to filter generated messages. Defaults to empty.	--term-prefix		poeditor-term-prefix

Conversion

poe2arb convert command only converts the POE export to ARB format. Refer to Supported features section.

For conversion, you need to pass the translation file language in the --lang/-l flag.

By default, a template ARB file is generated. So no empty message is skipped and attributes are generated. If you want to skip that, pass --no-template flag.

You may filter terms with --term-prefix. Defaults to empty (no prefix).

Currently, only an stdin/stdout is supported for the poe2arb convert command.

poe2arb convert io --lang en < Hello_World_English.json > lib/l10n/app_en.arb

Seeding POEditor project

EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE

If you're setting up a project from some template code, you probably already have some ARB files that need to be imported into the POEditor project. Using the POEditor's built-in tool won't give a satisfying result, as it will completely ignore placeholders along with their types and other parameters, as well as it won't "understand" the plural ICU message format. This is where poe2arb seed command comes into place.

poe2arb seed command uses the same configuration as the poe2arb poe, but it needs API access token with a write access, to create language in the project if needed, and to upload the translations and terms.

This command is meant only for seeding the project, i.e. setting its first contents. It won't override your existing translations and won't delete anything. That said, it should still be run with caution and running this on projects with already populated translations is inadvisable.

Syntax & supported features

Term name must be a valid Dart field name, additionaly, it must start with a lowercase letter (Flutter's constraint).

Term prefix filtering

If you wish to use one POEditor project for multiple packages, ideally you do not want one package's terms to pollute all other packages. This is what term prefixes are for.

Term names in POEditor can be defined starting with a prefix (only letters), followed by a colon :. E.g. loans:helpPage_title or design_system:modalClose. Then, in your l10n.yaml or with the --term-prefix flag you may define which terms should be imported, filtered by the prefix.

If you don't pass a prefix to poe2arb (or pass an empty one), it will only import the terms that have no prefix. If you pass prefix to poe2arb, it will import only the terms with this prefix.

Examples

Term name in POEditor	--term-prefix or poeditor-term-prefix (l10n.yaml)	Message name in ARB
appTitle	none	appTitle
somePrefix:appTitle	none	not imported
appTitle	somePrefix	not imported
somePrefix:appTitle	somePrefix	appTitle

Placeholders

Placeholders can be as simple as a text between brackets, but they can also be well-defined with a type and format, to make use of date and number formatting.

Placeholders that have no type specified will have a String type, as opposed to Flutter's Object default type.

Each unique placeholder must be defined only once. I.e. for one {placeholder,String} you may have many {placeholder} (that use the same definition), but no other {placeholder,String} must be found in the term.

Available placeholder types:

• String - default when no type is specified.

• Object - is toString()ed.

• DateTime

  Placeholders with type DateTime must have a format specified. The valid values are the names of the DateFormat constructors, e.g. yMd, jms, or EEEEE.

• num, int, double

  Placeholders with type num, int, or double may have* a format specified. The valid values are the names of the NumberFormat constructors, e.g. decimalPattern, or percentPattern. In plurals, the count placeholder must be of int or num type. It can be left with no definition.

  Number placeholders without a specified format will be simply toString()ed.

Only template files can define placeholders with their type and format. In non-template languages, placeholders' types and formats are ignored and no logical errors are reported.

*If you're using Flutter 3.5 or older, you need to specify format for numeric placeholders. Otherwise flutter gen-l10n will fail. You can look at the legacy placeholder syntax diagrams for placeholders here and for plural's count placeholders here.

Examples

Below are some examples of strings that make use of placeholders. Simple and well-defined.

Hello, {name}!

Hello, {name,String}!

You have {coins,int,decimalPattern} coins left in your {wallet,String} wallet.

last modified on {date,DateTime,yMMMEEEEd}

Placeholder syntax diagram

count placeholder syntax diagram

Plurals

POEditor plurals are also supported. Simply mark the the term as plural and give it any name (it's never used, but required by POEditor to enable plurals for the term).

In translations, a {count} placeholder can be used. You can use other placeholders too. Example:

one:    Andy has 1 kilogram of {fruit}.
other:  Andy has {count} kilograms of {fruit}.

You must provide at least other plural category for your translations, otherwise it won't be converted.

Contributing

Formatting

We use gofumpt, which is a superset of gofmt.

To make gopls in VS Code use gofumpt, add this to your settings:

"gopls": {
    "formatting.gofumpt": true
},

Linting

We use staticcheck with all checks enabled.

To make VS Code use staticcheck, add this to your settings:

"go.lintTool": "staticcheck",
"go.lintFlags": ["-checks=all"],

Building

All you need is Go 1.20.

go build .

Releasing

Create a lightweight git tag and push it. GitHub Actions with a GoReleaser workflow will take care of the rest.

git tag v0.1.1
git push origin v0.1.1