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I have an application which uses Auto Layouts.

The app switches RTL and LTR languages perfectly when the user selects he's or her's device phone language. All texts are localized, and language directions are working.

I also have a button inside the app, to change it's language without restarting the app. This also works great, and all texts are being replaced.

The problem is that when the user changes the language from within the app, "Respect Language Direction" option in the constraints i have pre-defined is ironically not respected.

Any ideas?

Raz
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1 Answers1

7

Eventually, I have managed to solve this issue.

I couldn't find a way to force the change the RTL - LTR auto layout constraints, so i have decided to duplicate 2 additional storyboards for each language direction. So, actually my app now contains 3 storyboards - Main.storyboard, StoryboardRTL.storyboard and StoryboardLTR.storyboard.

Main handles changes in language direction when it is performed from the settings on the iDevice, and RTL / LTR is has it's own orientation, to support changing the app language from inside the app.

When the user selects to change to an RTL language, I set the selected language in the UserDefaults:

    [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setObject:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"he", nil] forKey:@"AppleLanguages"];
    [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] synchronize];

and right after i call a method i have written in the AppDelegate, which changes the storyboard according to the language layout.

- (void)reloadStoryboard
{
    UIStoryboard *storyboard;

    switch ([AALanguageManager getCurrentLanguage]) {

        case CurrentLanguageRTL:
            storyboard = [UIStoryboard storyboardWithName:@"StoryboardRTL" bundle:[NSBundle mainBundle]];
            break;
        default:
            storyboard = [UIStoryboard storyboardWithName:@"StoryboardLTR" bundle:[NSBundle mainBundle]];
            break;
    }

    self.window.rootViewController = [storyboard instantiateInitialViewController];
    [self.window makeKeyAndVisible];
}

This looks to the user as if the app restarted, and display the proper storyboard with the RTL / LTR layout. When the user restarts the app again, the selected language is already set, and the main storyboard is displayed, with all the correct layout according to selected language.

Raz
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    this is a bad solution. If u need to change one thing in the design u have to change in 3 different storyboards – iosMentalist Nov 24 '17 at 14:20
  • this is not the right solution, lot of extra work required, simple solution is to simply change the semantic view attribute of UIView to read forceLeftToRIght or forceRightToLeft – Asif Ali Jul 06 '19 at 20:39
  • @iosMentalist this solved an issue, which 4 years later is supported out of the box. – Raz Aug 01 '19 at 13:41