hardcoded_string_finder 2.1.0

Cross-platform CLI tool to find hardcoded strings in Flutter projects with smart input handling, translation preservation, and efficient CSV/JSON export for localization.

Hardcoded String Finder

A cross-platform CLI tool for Flutter/Dart projects that does two things:

1. Extract hardcoded strings from your code and export them to CSV/JSON for translation
2. Generate localization files from your translated CSV in multiple formats:
   • ARB (Official Flutter) - for flutter gen-l10n
   • GetX Map - for GetX state management
   • Simple JSON - for custom parsing

---

Features

✨ Automatic Detection - Scans your entire lib/ directory for hardcoded strings 📊 CSV Export - Generates spreadsheet with 70+ language columns ready for translation 📄 JSON Export - Creates JSON file with key-value pairs 🔄 Translation Preservation - Merges new strings with existing translations 🔑 Auto Key Generation - Converts strings to valid snake_case localization keys 🚫 Smart Filtering - Ignores URLs, numbers, asset paths, and already localized strings 🌍 ARB Generation - Converts translated CSV directly into .arb files for Flutter l10n 🚀 GetX Map Generation - Generates Dart Map files for GetX state management 📄 JSON Generation - Generates simple JSON files for custom parsing 📄 l10n.yaml - Auto-creates l10n.yaml in your project root (ARB format) ⚠️ Missing Translation Report - Generates report files showing exactly which keys are missing in which languages 🛡️ Cross-Platform - Works on Windows, macOS, and Linux

---

Installation

Global Activation (Recommended)

dart pub global activate hardcoded_string_finder

Then run from any Flutter project:

hardcoded_string_finder

Project-Specific Usage

dev_dependencies:
  hardcoded_string_finder: ^2.0.0

Then run from project root:

dart run hardcoded_string_finder

---

Usage

Run from your Flutter/Dart project root directory:

dart run hardcoded_string_finder

You will see:

🔍 Hardcoded String Finder v2.0.0

What would you like to do?

1. Extract hardcoded strings from project
2. Generate localization files from CSV

If you choose option 2, you'll see:

🌍 Localization Format Selection

Choose your localization format:

1. ARB (Official Flutter)
2. GetX Map
3. Simple JSON

---

Option 1 — Extract Hardcoded Strings

Scans your lib/ directory, finds all hardcoded strings, and exports them to CSV and/or JSON.

First Time Run

• Creates the specified folder if it doesn't exist
• Generates hardcoded_strings.json and/or hardcoded_strings.csv
• CSV includes 70+ language columns ready for translation

Subsequent Runs

When you run again on an existing project, you get three choices:

1. 🔀 Smart Merge (RECOMMENDED)
   → Keep all existing translations
   → Add new strings (empty translations ready)

2. 📁 Create New Version
   → Keep old files untouched
   → Create: myapp_strings_v2/

3. ⚠️  Complete Overwrite
   → DELETE existing translations
   → Start from scratch

CSV Structure

The exported CSV includes three header rows:

• Row 1: Column numbers (1, 2, 3, ...)
• Row 2: Language codes (app_en, app_ar, app_es, ...)
• Row 3: Language names (ENGLISH - en, Arabic - ar, Spanish - es, ...)

Example data rows:

photo_was_saved,Photo was saved,,,
select_image,Select Image,,,

Key Format

All keys are automatically converted to snake_case:

"Select Image"   →  select_image
"Loading..."     →  loading
"Go Back?"       →  go_back

Smart Merge Tracking

🔄 CSV updated: myapp_strings/hardcoded_strings.csv
   📝 New strings: 5
   🔄 Updated strings: 2
   💾 Preserved strings: 23
   📊 Total strings: 30

---

Option 3 — Auto-replace Hardcoded Strings

Automatically replaces hardcoded strings in your code with localization keys from your generated ARB, GetX, or JSON files.

Flow

Step 1 — Choose your localization format:

1. ARB (Official Flutter)
2. GetX Map
3. Custom JSON

Step 2 — Enter your localization folder path (or press Enter for default):

Enter path to your localization files:
(default: lib/l10n/ for ARB, lib/localization/ for GetX, assets/translations/ for JSON)

Step 3 — Choose replacement mode:

1. Replace all at once
2. Preview file-by-file with confirmation

Step 4 — Backup suggestion:

⚠️  This will modify your source files.
💡 It's recommended to create a backup before proceeding.
Create backup to .hardcoded_backup/? (y/N)

Step 5 — The tool scans lib/ for hardcoded strings and matches them with your localization keys.

Replace All Mode:

• Automatically replaces all matched strings
• Shows summary of changes
• Backup created if requested

File-by-File Preview Mode:

• Shows each file with proposed changes
• Preview example:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[1/4] lib/screens/home.dart (5 strings)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Line 24: - Text("Select Image")
         + Text(AppLocalizations.of(context).selectImage)

Line 45: - Text("Loading...")
         + Text(AppLocalizations.of(context).loading)

• Choose to replace, skip, or continue to next file
• Full control over which files to modify

Prerequisites

• You must have generated localization files first using Option 2
• Localization files must contain key-value pairs matching your hardcoded strings
• Backup is recommended (saves to .hardcoded_backup/)

Replacement Patterns

ARB Format:

"Select Image" → AppLocalizations.of(context).selectImage

GetX Format:

"Select Image" → tr.selectImage

Custom JSON Format:

"Select Image" → AppLocalizations.of(context).selectImage

(You can customize this pattern for your JSON implementation)

Safety Features

• Backup option saves original files to .hardcoded_backup/
• File-by-file preview mode lets you review changes before applying
• Only replaces strings that have exact matches in localization files
• Shows clear summary of all changes made

Example Usage

dart run hardcoded_string_finder
# Choose option 3
# Select ARB format
# Confirm folder path
# Choose file-by-file preview
# Review and approve changes per file

---

Option 2 — Generate Localization Files from CSV

Takes your translated CSV and generates localization files in your chosen format.

Common Flow (All Formats)

Step 1 — Choose your format:

1. ARB (Official Flutter)
2. GetX Map
3. Simple JSON

Step 2 — Enter your CSV path (or press Enter for default):

Enter path to your CSV file:
(default: ./hardcoded_strings/hardcoded_strings.csv)

Step 3 — The tool shows a 5×5 terminal preview so you can identify your rows:

┌──────────────────────┬──────────────────────┬─────┐
│                      │                      │ ... │  ← Row 1
├──────────────────────┼──────────────────────┼─────┤
│ app_en               │ app_ar               │ ... │  ← Row 2
├──────────────────────┼──────────────────────┼─────┤
│ ENGLISH - en         │ Arabic - ar          │ ... │  ← Row 3
├──────────────────────┼──────────────────────┼─────┤
│ select_image         │ Select Image         │ ... │  ← Row 4
└──────────────────────┴──────────────────────┴─────┘

Step 4 — Tell the tool which rows to use:

Which row number contains the language codes? (e.g. app_en, app_ru): 2
Which row number does the translation data start?: 4

Step 5 — Choose output folder (format-specific defaults).

Step 6 — Files are generated with progress feedback.

---

ARB Format (Official Flutter)

Generates .arb files for Flutter's official localization system.

Output Folder

• Default: lib/l10n/

Generated Files

• app_en.arb, app_ar.arb, etc. (one per language column)
• l10n.yaml (in project root)
• arb_report.txt (if any translations are missing)

Example ARB File

{
  "@@locale": "en",
  "select_image": "Select Image",
  "loading": "Loading...",
  "photo_was_saved": "Photo was saved"
}

l10n.yaml (auto-created in project root)

arb-dir: lib/l10n
template-arb-file: app_en.arb
output-localization-file: app_localizations.dart
output-class: AppLocalizations
nullable-getter: false

Next Steps

# Add to pubspec.yaml under flutter:
#   generate: true

flutter pub add intl
flutter pub add flutter_localizations --sdk=flutter
flutter pub get
flutter gen-l10n

---

GetX Map Format

Generates Dart Map files for GetX state management.

Output Folder

• Default: lib/localization/

Generated Files

• lib/localization/languages/app_en.dart, app_ar.dart, etc. (one per language column)
• lib/localization/app_translations.dart (main translation class)
• getx_report.txt (if any translations are missing)

Example Language File (app_en.dart)

final Map<String, String> app_en = {
  'select_image': 'Select Image',
  'loading': 'Loading...',
  'photo_was_saved': 'Photo was saved'
};

Main Translation File (app_translations.dart)

import 'package:your_package/localization/languages/app_en.dart';
import 'package:your_package/localization/languages/app_ar.dart';
import 'package:get/get.dart';

class AppTranslations extends Translations {
  @override
  Map<String, Map<String, String>> get keys => {
    'en_US': app_en,
    'ar_SA': app_ar,
  };
}

Next Steps

flutter pub add get

Then configure in your main.dart:

GetMaterialApp(
  translations: AppTranslations(),
  locale: Locale('en', 'US'),
  fallbackLocale: Locale('en', 'US'),
)

---

JSON Format

Generates simple JSON files for custom parsing.

Output Folder

• Default: assets/translations/

Generated Files

• app_en.json, app_ar.json, etc. (one per language column)
• json_report.txt (if any translations are missing)

Example JSON File (app_en.json)

{
  "select_image": "Select Image",
  "loading": "Loading...",
  "photo_was_saved": "Photo was saved"
}

Next Steps

Add to your pubspec.yaml:

flutter:
  assets:
    - assets/translations/

Then run:

flutter pub get

Load in your app:

final content = await rootBundle.loadString('assets/translations/app_en.json');
final translations = jsonDecode(content);

---

Missing Translation Reports

All formats generate missing translation reports if any key has a translation in some languages but is missing in others:

• ARB: arb_report.txt in lib/l10n/
• GetX: getx_report.txt in lib/localization/
• JSON: json_report.txt in assets/translations/

Report Format

📊 [Format] Generation Report
Generated: 2026-01-15 10:30:00
Total keys: 141
[Format] files created: 70
Keys with missing translations: 2

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Missing Translations (by key):
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[select_image]
  Missing in: app_ar, app_zh

[loading]
  Missing in: app_ru

Keys missing in ALL languages are not reported — that is considered intentional (not yet translated).

---

What It Detects

• Text() widgets
• text: properties
• title: properties
• label:, hintText:, labelText: properties
• message: properties
• String return statements

What It Ignores

• Numbers (e.g., "123", "1.5")
• URLs (e.g., "https://example.com")
• Asset paths (e.g., "assets/image.png")
• File paths
• Symbols only
• Already localized strings (.tr, .i18n, AppString.)

---

Supported Languages

70+ languages including English, Arabic, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Hindi, and many more.

All language codes: app_en, app_af, app_sq, app_am, app_ar, app_hy, app_az, app_bn, app_eu, app_be, app_bg, app_my, app_ca, app_zh, app_zh_hk, app_hr, app_cs, app_da, app_nl, app_et, app_fil, app_fi, app_fr, app_gl, app_ka, app_de, app_el, app_gu, app_he, app_hi, app_hu, app_is, app_id, app_it, app_ja, app_kn, app_kk, app_km, app_ko, app_ky, app_lo, app_lv, app_lt, app_mk, app_ms, app_ml, app_mr, app_mn, app_ne, app_no, app_fa, app_pl, app_pt, app_pa, app_ro, app_ru, app_sr, app_si, app_sk, app_sl, app_es, app_sw, app_sv, app_ta, app_te, app_th, app_tr, app_uk, app_vi, app_zu

---

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details

Issues

Found a bug? Have a feature request? Please open an issue on GitHub.

---

Changelog

2.0.0

• Added Option 2: Generate localization files in multiple formats
  • ARB (Official Flutter) - for flutter gen-l10n
  • GetX Map - for GetX state management
  • Simple JSON - for custom parsing
• Format selection menu for choosing localization format
• CSV preview in terminal (5×5 table) before asking for row configuration
• Header row validation with retry loop
• Auto-creates l10n.yaml in project root (ARB format)
• Per-key missing translation reports for all formats:
  • arb_report.txt
  • getx_report.txt
  • json_report.txt
• Locale derived automatically from column name (app_en → en, app_zh_hk → zh_HK)
• All keys auto-converted to snake_case regardless of CSV format
• Clean file structure — all generators in lib/src/generators/
• GetX generator only includes languages with actual translations
• Package name prompt for GetX imports

1.0.0

• Initial release
• Automatic hardcoded string detection
• JSON and CSV export with 70+ language support
• Translation preservation feature
• Smart filtering for URLs, numbers, and already localized strings