12. Internationalization & Localization
Written by Libranner Santos

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Apps should look and feel local to the user’s region, so if you’re aiming to create apps that users can use globally, you need to keep internationalization and localization in mind.

As it turns out, Interfaces created with Auto Layout can support internationalization, and Xcode provides the tools to help you localize all of your resources.

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to test if your app is internationalization-ready. You’ll also learn about the things you need to consider while creating your constraints, so they can properly handle different languages.

What’s internationalization and localization?

Internationalization refers to creating apps that are agnostic to the language, which means they can handle changes in the content size — for example, displaying text in different languages. Localization, on the other hand, means translating the resources into different languages.

These two concepts are crucial to providing a good user experience, especially when users expect their apps to use their preferred language. As a developer, you must prepare your layouts to support internationalization and localization. Thankfully, with Auto Layout, developing your app for internationalization and localization support is reasonably easy to achieve.

Auto Layout and internationalization

Go to the starter project and open the TodoApp project. Now, build and run.

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private func setupConstrainsts() {
  contentView.addSubview(taskNameLabel)
  contentView.addSubview(favoriteButton)
  
  taskNameLabel.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints =
    false
  favoriteButton.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints =
    false
  
  let constraints = [
    favoriteButton.leadingAnchor.constraint(
      equalTo: contentView.leadingAnchor, 
      constant: 20),
    favoriteButton.centerYAnchor.constraint(
      equalTo: contentView.centerYAnchor),
    
    taskNameLabel.leadingAnchor.constraint(
      equalTo: favoriteButton.trailingAnchor, 
      constant: 20),
    taskNameLabel.trailingAnchor.constraint(
      lessThanOrEqualTo: contentView.trailingAnchor, 
      constant: -20),
    taskNameLabel.centerYAnchor.constraint(
      equalTo: contentView.centerYAnchor)
  ]
  
  NSLayoutConstraint.activate(constraints)
}