Question

I am making a simple retail commerce solution, where there are prices in a few different models. These prices contribute to a total price. Imagine paying $0.30 more for selecting a topping for your yogurt.

When I set the price field to

t.decimal   :price, precision:8, scale:2

The database stores 6.50 as 6.5. I know in the standard rails way, you call number_to_currency(price) to get the formatted value in the Views. I need to programmatically call the price field as well formatted string, i.e. $6.50 a few places that are not directly part of the View. Also, my needs are simple (no currency conversion etc), I prefer to have the price formatted universally in the model without repeated calling number_to_currency in views.

Is there a good way I can modify my getter for price such that it always returns two decimal place with a dollar sign, i.e. $6.50 when it’s called?

Thanks in advance.

UPDATE

Thanks everyone.

I’ve elected to use Alex’s approach because it seems very ‘hackish’ to do the includes just for formatting the number. Using his approach, I did:

  def price_change=(val)
      write_attribute :price_change, val.to_s.gsub(/[\$]/,'').to_d
  end

  def price_change
    "$%.2f" % self[:price_change]
  end

Cheers.

UPDATE 2

Caveat Emptor. Once you do this, you lose the ability to do operations to the number because it’s now a string.

Please beware if anyone is facing the same problem as me.

Answer 1

Just add a method in your model which is named like your attribute in the database like:

def price
   "$%.2f" % self[:price]
end

which gives you full control over the formatting or use the Rails provided helper method

def price
   ActionController::Base.helpers.number_to_currency(self[:price])
end

this should do the trick.
hope it helps!