Internationalizing Flutter Apps

If your app might be deployed to users who speak another language then you’ll need to “internationalize” it. That means you’ll need to write the app in a way that makes it possible to “localize” values like text and layouts for each language or “locale” that the app supports. Flutter provides widgets and classes that help with internationalization and the Flutter libraries themselves are internationalized.

The tutorial that follows is largely written in terms of the Flutter MaterialApp class, since most applications are written that way. Applications written in terms of the lower level WidgetsApp class can also be internationalized using the same classes and logic.

Contents

• Setting up an internationalized app: the flutter_localizations package
• Tracking the locale: The Locale class and the Localizations widget
• Loading and retrieving localized values
• Using the bundled LocalizationsDelegates
• Defining a class for the app’s localized resources
• Specifying the app’s supportedLocales parameter
• An alternative class for the app’s localized resources
• Appendix: Using the Dart intl tools

Setting up an internationalized app: the flutter_localizations package

By default Flutter only provides US English localizations. To add support for other languages, an application must specify additional MaterialApp properties, and include a separate package called flutter_localizations. As of October 2017, this package supports 15 languages.

To use flutter_localizations, add the package as a dependency to your pubspec.yaml file:

dependencies:
  flutter:
    sdk: flutter
  flutter_localizations:
    sdk: flutter

Next, import the flutter_localizations library and specify localizationsDelegates and supportedLocales for MaterialApp:

import 'package:flutter_localizations/flutter_localizations.dart';

new MaterialApp(
 localizationsDelegates: [
   // ... app-specific localization delegate[s] here
   GlobalMaterialLocalizations.delegate,
   GlobalWidgetsLocalizations.delegate,
 ],
 supportedLocales: [
    const Locale('en', 'US'), // English
    const Locale('he', 'IL'), // Hebrew
    // ... other locales the app supports
  ],
  // ...
)

Apps based on WidgetsApp are similar except that the GlobalMaterialLocalizations.delegate isn’t needed.

The elements of the localizationsDelegates list are factories that produce collections of localized values. GlobalMaterialLocalizations.delegate provides localized strings and other values for the Material Components library. GlobalWidgetsLocalizations.delegate defines the default text direction, either left to right or right to left, for the widgets library.

More information about these app properties, the types they depend on, and how internationalized Flutter apps are typically structured, can be found below.

Tracking the locale: The Locale class and the Localizations widget

The Locale class is used to identify the user’s language. Mobile devices support setting the locale for all applications, usually via a system settings menu. Internationalized apps respond by displaying values that are locale-specific. For example, if the user switches the device’s locale from English to French then a Text widget that displayed “Hello World” would be rebuilt with “Bonjour le monde”.

The Localizations widget defines the locale for its child and the localized resources that the child depends on. The WidgetsApp widget creates a Localizations widget and rebuilds it if the system’s locale changes.

You can always lookup an app’s current locale with Localizations.localeOf():

Locale myLocale = Localizations.localeOf(context);

Loading and retrieving localized values

The Localizations widget is used to load and lookup objects that contain collections of localized values. Apps refer to these objects with Localizations.of(context,type). If the device’s locale changes, the Localizations widget automatically loads values for the new locale and then rebuilds widgets that used it. This happens because Localizations works like an InheritedWidget. When a build function refers to an inherited widget an implicit dependency on the inherited widget is created. When an inherited widget changes (when the Localizations widget’s locale changes), its dependent contexts are rebuilt.

Localized values are loaded by the Localizations widget’s list of LocalizationsDelegates. Each delegate must define an async load() method that produces an object which encapsulates a collection of localized values. Typically these objects define one method per localized value.

In a large app, different modules or packages might be bundled with their own localizations. That’s why the Localizations widget manages a table of objects, one per LocalizationsDelegate. To retrieve the object produced by one of the LocalizationsDelegate’s load methods, you specify a BuildContext and the object’s type.

For example, the localized strings for the Material Components widgets are defined by the MaterialLocalizations class. Instances of this class are created by a LocalizationDelegate provided by the MaterialApp class. They can be retrieved with Localizations.of:

Localizations.of<MaterialLocalizations>(context, MaterialLocalizations);

This particular Localizations.of() expression is used frequently, so the MaterialLocalizations class provides a convenient shorthand:

static MaterialLocalizations of(BuildContext context) {
  return Localizations.of<MaterialLocalizations>(context, MaterialLocalizations);
}

/// References to the localized values defined by MaterialLocalizations
/// are typically written like this:

tooltip: MaterialLocalizations.of(context).backButtonTooltip,

Using the bundled LocalizationsDelegates

To keep things as small and uncomplicated as possible, the flutter package includes implementations of the MaterialLocalizations and WidgetsLocalizations interfaces that only provide US English values. These implementation classes are called DefaultMaterialLocalizations and DefaultWidgetsLocalizations, respectively. They’re included automatically unless a different delegate of the same base type is specified with the app’s localizationsDelegates parameter.

The flutter_localizations package includes multi-language implementations of the localizations interfaces called GlobalMaterialLocalizations and GlobalWidgetsLocalizations. International apps must specify localization delegates for these classes as described in Setting up an internationalized app.

import 'package:flutter_localizations/flutter_localizations.dart';

new MaterialApp(
 localizationsDelegates: [
   // ... app-specific localization delegate[s] here
   GlobalMaterialLocalizations.delegate,
   GlobalWidgetsLocalizations.delegate,
 ],
 supportedLocales: [
    const Locale('en', 'US'), // English
    const Locale('he', 'IL'), // Hebrew
    // ... other locales the app supports
  ],
  // ...
)

The global localization delegates construct locale-specific instances of the corresponding classes. For example, GlobalMaterialLocalizations.delegate is a LocalizationsDelegate that produces an instance of GlobalMaterialLocalizations.

As of October 2017, the global localization classes support about 15 languages.

Defining a class for the app’s localized resources

Putting all of this together for an internationalized app usually starts with the class that encapsulates the app’s localized values. The example that follows is typical of such classes.

Complete source code for this example app.

This example is based on the APIs and tools provided by the intl package. An alternative class for the app’s localized resources describes an example that doesn’t depend on the intl package.

The DemoLocalizations class contains the app’s strings (just one for the example) translated into the locales that the app supports. It uses the initializeMessages() function generated by Dart’s intl package to load the translated strings, and Intl.message() to look them up.

class DemoLocalizations {
  static Future<DemoLocalizations> load(Locale locale) {
    final String name = locale.countryCode.isEmpty ? locale.languageCode : locale.toString();
    final String localeName = Intl.canonicalizedLocale(name);
    return initializeMessages(localeName).then((Null _) {
      Intl.defaultLocale = localeName;
      return new DemoLocalizations();
    });
  }

  static DemoLocalizations of(BuildContext context) {
    return Localizations.of<DemoLocalizations>(context, DemoLocalizations);
  }

  String get title {
    return Intl.message(
      'Hello World',
      name: 'title',
      desc: 'Title for the Demo application',
    );
  }
}

A class based on the intl package imports a generated message catalog that provides the initializeMessages() function and the per-locale backing store for Intl.message(). The message catalog is produced by an intl tool that analyzes the source code for classes that contain Intl.message() calls. In this case that would just be the DemoLocalizations class.

Specifying the app’s supportedLocales parameter

Although Flutter’s Material Components library includes support for about 16 languages, only English language translations are available by default. It’s up to the developer to decide exactly which languages to support, since it wouldn’t make sense for the toolkit libraries to support a different set of locales than the app does.

The MaterialApp supportedLocales parameter limits locale changes. When the user changes the locale setting on their device, the app’s Localizations widget only follows suit if the new locale is a member of the this list. If an exact match for the device locale isn’t found, then the first supported locale with a matching languageCode is used. If that fails, then the first element of the supportedLocales list is used.

In terms of the previous DemoApp example, the app only accepts the US English or French Canadian locales, and it substitutes US English (the first locale in the list) for anything else.

An app that wants to use a different “locale resolution” method can provide a localeResolutionCallback. For example, to have your app unconditionally accept whatever locale the user selects:

class DemoApp extends StatelessWidget {
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return new MaterialApp(
       localeResolutionCallback(Locale locale, Iterable<Locale> supportedLocales) {
         return locale;
       }
       // ...
    );
  }
}

An alternative class for the app’s localized resources

The previous DemoApp example was defined in terms of the Dart intl package. Developers can choose their own approach for managing localized values for the sake of simplicity or perhaps to integrate with a different i18n framework.

Complete source code for this example app.

In this version of DemoApp the class that contains the app’s localizations, DemoLocalizations, includes all of its translations directly in per language Maps.

class DemoLocalizations {
  DemoLocalizations(this.locale);

  final Locale locale;

  static DemoLocalizations of(BuildContext context) {
    return Localizations.of<DemoLocalizations>(context, DemoLocalizations);
  }

  static Map<String, Map<String, String>> _localizedValues = {
    'en': {
      'title': 'Hello World',
    },
    'es': {
      'title': 'Hola Mundo',
    },
  };

  String get title {
    return _localizedValues[locale.languageCode]['title'];
  }
}

In the minimal app the DemoLocalizationsDelegate is slightly different. Its load method returns a SynchronousFuture because no asynnchronous loading needs to take place.

class DemoLocalizationsDelegate extends LocalizationsDelegate<DemoLocalizations> {
  const DemoLocalizationsDelegate();

  @override
  bool isSupported(Locale locale) => ['en', 'es'].contains(locale.languageCode);

  @override
  Future<DemoLocalizations> load(Locale locale) {
    return new SynchronousFuture<DemoLocalizations>(new DemoLocalizations(locale));
  }

  @override
  bool shouldReload(DemoLocalizationsDelegate old) => false;
}

Appendix: Using the Dart intl tools

Before building an API using the Dart intl package you’ll want to review the intl package’s documentation. Here’s a summary of the process for localizing an app that depends on the intl package.

The demo app depends on a generated source file called l10n/messages_all.dart which defines all of the localizable strings used by the app.

Rebuilding l10n/messages_all.dart requires two steps.

1. With the app’s root directory as the current directory, generate l10n/intl_messages.arb from lib/main.dart:

   $ flutter pub pub run intl_translation:extract_to_arb --output-dir=lib/i10n lib/main.dart

   The intl_messages.arb file is a JSON format map with one entry for each Intl.message() function defined in main.dart. This file serves as a template for the the English and Spanish translations, intl_en.arb and intl_es.arb. These translations are created by you, the developer.

2. With the app’s root directory as the current directory, generate intl_messages_<locale>.dart for each intl_<locale>.arb file and intl_messages_all.dart, which imports all of the messages files:

   $ flutter pub pub run intl_translation:generate_from_arb --output-dir=lib/l10n \
      --no-use-deferred-loading lib/main.dart lib/l10n/intl_*.arb

   The DemoLocalizations class uses the generated initializeMessages() function (defined in intl_messages_all.dart) to load the localized messages and Intl.message() to look them up.