In order to make referencing keys for localized strings a little more reliable, our application references generated constants for localized string keys:
This eliminates the potential for developers to misspell a key when referencing a localized strings. And because these constants are automatically generated by the exact same process that provides localized strings for the application, each and every constant is guaranteed to have a localized string associated with it.
I’m currently attempting to implement something similar for the localized strings referenced by our new App Intents. Our initial release of App Intent functionality is simply using string literals to reference localized strings:
However, I am running into several issues when trying to reference the string keys as a constant. The closest I managed to get was defining the constant as either a LocalizationValue or as a StaticString and referencing the constant while initializing the LocalizedStringResource. With this approach, I see no errors from Xcode until I try and compile. What’s more is that the wording of the error being thrown is quite peculiar:
As you can see with the sample code above, I am clearly calling LocalizedStringResource’s initializer directly as Indicated by the error.
Is what I’m trying to do even possible with App Intents? From my research, it does look like iOS app localization is moving more towards using string literals for localized strings. Like with String Catalog’s ability to automatically generate entries from strings referenced in UI without the need for a key. However, we’d prefer to use constants if possible for the reasons listed above.