Android GCM push notification for localization application

Question

I have a single android application, which supports for 7 countries(Localization and Internationalization). The application functionality and language changed based on the device locale. I need to implement the GCM push notifications for this application. Requirement:

• Is it possible to send the push notification in 7 different languages with single GCM account.
• Is there any way to display the push notification in their device local language.

Answer 1

You can either take the approach suggested by Ascorbin, or implement something similar to what Apple have in their push notifications:

Your server can send a GCM message with a parameter that is a key to a message. Yout Android App will have to contain for each possible key the strings that should be displayed for it in each of the 7 languages (using multiple copies of strings.xml). Then the GCM reciever in your app will get the key from the server and get the resource string that matches it (it will automatically get the string that matched the locale of the device). This way you don't have to worry about localization in your server. The downside of this approach is that all your messages have to be predefined in your app.

You can also add parameters to the message key like Apple do. For example, the server sends a key = "NEW_MAIL_FROM" and param1 = "John". The app finds a string resource for that key (lets assume the device used English locale) - "You have a message from {0}" - and replaces the param with John, displaying the message "You have a message from John". A device with a differennt locale will show a message in a different language.