Question

Is there a way in Objective-C on iOS to spell out an integer number as text?

For example, if I have

NSInteger someNumber = 11242043;

I would like to know some function so that would return a string similar to “eleven million two hundred forty two thousand forty three.”

Answer 1

Apple has a lot of handy formatting functionality built in for many data types. Called a “formatter,” they can convert objects to/from string representations.

For your case, you will be using NSNumberFormatter, but if you have an integer you need to convert it to an NSNumber first. See below example.

NSInteger anInt = 11242043;
NSString *wordNumber;

//convert to words
NSNumber *numberValue = [NSNumber numberWithInt:anInt]; //needs to be NSNumber!
NSNumberFormatter *numberFormatter = [[NSNumberFormatter alloc] init];
[numberFormatter setNumberStyle:NSNumberFormatterSpellOutStyle];
wordNumber = [numberFormatter stringFromNumber:numberValue];
NSLog(@"Answer: %@", wordNumber);
// Answer: eleven million two hundred forty-two thousand forty-three

If you’d like to learn more about formatters:
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/General/Conceptual/Devpedia-CocoaApp/Formatter.html