Add a new language in android without republishing the app

Question

I know how develop a multilingual app in Android. The following link explains how to do so.

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/localization.html

Assume that I release to the market my app in 3 different languages developed with the best practices described in the link above in mind.

If I want to add a new language I have to republish a new version. Is there a good way to avoid republishing the app if I add more languages?

It is important that the application detects the correct language according to the language of the smartphone.

Answer 1

If you are using the standard localization framework then the answer is no, because all the localization files are looked up in the res folder at runtime. And to update the res folder, you need to update the apk.

The only possible way to do what you want is by coding your own localization framework, which, intuitively, should not be too hard. (Your have a function that searches for a string in a file, and the file is determined by the language). The bad thing is that you would need to set all the strings on your user interface objects programmatically.