Question

I have an EditText which should work as follows (Android 2.3.3):

The user enters for instance 10,40 (which is 10 Euro and 40 Cents in EU currency) – I want to then take that String input and convert it to a BigDecimal (or Number etc…) for instance, for further internal computation.

The same should work if the user enters 10.40 (which – in the case of US Dollar would amount to 10 Dollars and 40 Cents), then take that String input and convert it to a BigDecimal (or Number etc…) for instance.

I tried the following (based on Michael Petrotta’s answer here), which fails with “ParseException: Unparsable Number 10,40):

    // German input
    NumberFormat formatter = NumberFormat.getCurrencyInstance(Locale.GERMANY);
    // User input
    String value = "10,40";
    Number valueParsed = formatter.parse(value);

I also tried “10,40 €” to no avail. So either I am misunderstanding the purpose of NumberFormat.parse or I’m on a wrong track all together…? I really want to avoid using Regular Expressions to replace the comma in “10,40” for the version should work internationally and I’d like some clean, Locale-based approach.

EDIT

I found this question which addresses the same issue – the correct answer uses the same approach that I do, so I tried again (using France as a Locale this time) but it fails nonetheless, which seems quite odd… The comment under the referenced question suggested using replaceAll(“,”, “.”) which seems a bad idea to me, as some currencies use the comma as a divider for thousands, such as the US Dollar if I am not mistaken. I could however check the locale but that all seams shady 🙁 and potentially erroneous …

Answer 1

It seems that you don’t really need currency format. Use NumberFormat.getNumberInstance() instead:

String value = "10,40";
double d = (Double)NumberFormat.getNumberInstance().parse(value);
BigDecimal price = new BigDecimal(d);

This will throw NumberFormatException though in case the user will enter the value in format inappropriate for his locale (e.g. “10,40” for US), but should work in regular case.