Id	SetTextI18n
Summary	TextView Internationalization
Severity	Warning
Category	Internationalization
Platform	Android
Vendor	Android Open Source Project
Feedback	https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/new?component=192708
Since	1.5.0 (November 2015)
Affects	Kotlin and Java files
Editing	This check runs on the fly in the IDE editor
See	https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/localization.html
Implementation	Source Code
Tests	Source Code

• Never call Number#toString() to format numbers; it will not handle fraction separators and locale-specific digits properly. Consider using String#format with proper format specifications (%d or %f) instead.
• Do not pass a string literal (e.g. “Hello”) to display text. Hardcoded text can not be properly translated to other languages. Consider using Android resource strings instead.
• Do not build messages by concatenating text chunks. Such messages can not be properly translated.

Here is an example of lint warnings produced by this check:

src/test/pkg/CustomScreen.java:13:Warning: String literal in setText can
not be translated. Use Android resources instead. [SetTextI18n]
    view.setText("Hardcoded");
                 -----------
src/test/pkg/CustomScreen.java:17:Warning: Number formatting does not
take into account locale settings. Consider using String.format instead.
[SetTextI18n]
    view.setText(Integer.toString(50) + "%");
                 --------------------
src/test/pkg/CustomScreen.java:18:Warning: String literal in setText can
not be translated. Use Android resources instead. [SetTextI18n]
    view.setText(Double.toString(12.5) + " miles");
                                         --------
src/test/pkg/CustomScreen.java:21:Warning: String literal in setText can
not be translated. Use Android resources instead. [SetTextI18n]
    btn.setText("User " + getUserName());
                -------

Here is the source file referenced above:

src/test/pkg/CustomScreen.java:

package test.pkg;

import android.content.Context;
import android.widget.Button;
import android.widget.TextView;

class CustomScreen {

  public CustomScreen(Context context) {
    TextView view = new TextView(context);

    // Should fail - hardcoded string
    view.setText("Hardcoded");
    // Should pass - no letters
    view.setText("-");
    // Should fail - concatenation and toString for numbers.
    view.setText(Integer.toString(50) + "%");
    view.setText(Double.toString(12.5) + " miles");

    Button btn = new Button(context);
    btn.setText("User " + getUserName());
    btn.setText(String.format("%s of %s users", Integer.toString(5), Integer.toString(10)));
    view.setText("");
  }

  private static String getUserName() {
    return "stub";
  }
}

You can also visit the source code for the unit tests for this check to see additional scenarios.

The above example was automatically extracted from the first unit test found for this lint check, SetTextDetector.test. To report a problem with this extracted sample, visit https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/new?component=192708.

You can suppress false positives using one of the following mechanisms:

• Using a suppression annotation like this on the enclosing element:

  // Kotlin
  @Suppress("SetTextI18n")
  fun method() {
     setText(...)
  }

  or

  // Java
  @SuppressWarnings("SetTextI18n")
  void method() {
     setText(...);
  }

• Using a suppression comment like this on the line above:

  //noinspection SetTextI18n
  problematicStatement()

• Using a special lint.xml file in the source tree which turns off the check in that folder and any sub folder. A simple file might look like this:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <lint>
      <issue id="SetTextI18n" severity="ignore" />
  </lint>

  Instead of ignore you can also change the severity here, for example from error to warning. You can find additional documentation on how to filter issues by path, regular expression and so on here.

• In Gradle projects, using the DSL syntax to configure lint. For example, you can use something like

  lintOptions {
      disable 'SetTextI18n'
  }

  In Android projects this should be nested inside an android { } block.

• For manual invocations of lint, using the --ignore flag:

  $ lint --ignore SetTextI18n ...`

• Last, but not least, using baselines, as discussed here.