Formatting Currencies in Foreign Locales in Java

Question

I'm doing my best to find a way to format foreign currencies across various locales which are not default for that currency, using Java. I've found java.util.Currency, which can represent the proper symbol to use for various locales. That is, for USD, it provides me the symbol $ in the US, and US$ or USD in other nations. Also, I've found java.text.NumberFormat, which will format a currency for a specific locale. My problem - util.Currency will provide proper symbols and codes for representing currencies in their non-default locales, but will not format currency in any locale-specific way. NumberFormat assumes that the number I pass it, with a locale, is the currency of that locale, not a foreign currency.

For example, if I use getCurrencyInstance(Locale.GERMANY) and then format (1000) it assumes I am formatting 1000 euro. In reality, I may need the correct German-localized representation (correct decimal and thousands separator, whether to put the symbol before or after the amount) for USD, or Yen, or any other currency. The best I've been able to derive so far is to format a number using NumberFormat, then search the output for non-digit characters and replace them with symbols derived from util.Currency. However, this is very brittle, and probably not reliable enough for my purposes. Ideas? Any help is much appreciated.

Answer 1

Try using setCurrency on the instance returned by getCurrencyInstance(Locale.GERMANY)

Broken:

java.text.NumberFormat format = java.text.NumberFormat.getCurrencyInstance(java.util.Locale.GERMANY);
System.out.println(format.format(23));

Output: 23,00 €

Fixed:

java.util.Currency usd = java.util.Currency.getInstance("USD");
java.text.NumberFormat format = java.text.NumberFormat.getCurrencyInstance(java.util.Locale.GERMANY);
format.setCurrency(usd);
System.out.println(format.format(23));

Output: 23,00 USD