CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosobjective-ciso
MightyMouse
MightyMouse

Reputation: 13818

Get Currency Symbol and Currency Code based on ISOCountryCode

There are similar questions to this one from newbies like me in localization, but I couldn't find one that does the trick for me.

Here is my problem. We can get all the ISO country codes in an NSArray with a statement of the form [NSLocale ISOCountryCodes]. Now, for each and every country of those I would like to print the local currency as well as the currency code used in that country. What would be the appropriate way of doing this?

I did the following that does not work in the sense that I get lines of the form US United States: (null) ((null)) when instead I would like to get lines of the form US United States: $ (USD):

myCountryCode = [[NSLocale ISOCountryCodes] objectAtIndex:row];
appLocale = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier: @"en_US"];
identifier = [NSLocale localeIdentifierFromComponents: [NSDictionary
                      dictionaryWithObject: myCountryCode 
                                    forKey: NSLocaleCountryCode]];
myDictionary = [NSLocale componentsFromLocaleIdentifier: identifier];
myCountryName = [appLocale displayNameForKey:NSLocaleCountryCode 
                                       value:[myDictionary
                                             objectForKey:NSLocaleCountryCode]];
localCurrencySymbol = [appLocale displayNameForKey:NSLocaleCurrencySymbol
                      value:[myDictionary objectForKey:NSLocaleCurrencySymbol]];
currencyCode = [appLocale displayNameForKey:NSLocaleCurrencyCode 
                value: [myDictionary objectForKey:NSLocaleCurrencyCode]];
title = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@ %@: %@ (%@)", myCountryCode, myCountryName, localCurrencySymbol, currencyCode];
[appLocale release];

(Above identifier, myCountryCode, myCountryName, localCurrencySymbol, currencyCode, and title are all NSString pointers. Moreover myDictionary is an NSDictionary pointer and appLocale is an NSLocale pointer). Essentially the above code will be in a pickerview where I want to generate the title of each line on the fly.

Thank you very much for your time. Essentially the question is once we have the ISO country code how can we print (in the application locale) the currency symbol and the currency code for that specific country.

Upvotes: 5

Views: 11334

Answers (3)

Anthony McCormick
Anthony McCormick

Reputation: 2744

For anyone just wanting to get the currency code from the 3 letter iso code ( commonISOCurrencyCodes ). You can simply do this.

NSString *localeId = @"JPY"; //[[NSLocale commonISOCurrencyCodes] objectAtIndex:1];
NSLocale *locale = [NSLocale currentLocale];
NSString *currency = [locale displayNameForKey:NSLocaleCurrencySymbol
                                       value:localeId];
NSLog(@"locale %@ currency %@", localeId, currency);

Prints.

locale JPY currency ¥

Upvotes: 10

gaige
gaige

Reputation: 17481

I think your problem here is that you are expecting that componentsFromLocaleIdentifer will return information about the locale. Instead, it returns information about the string that is passed in as the identifier. Although you can receive NSLocalCurrencySymbol, it will only be present when the string that you are passing in has an override for the particular currency (which will never happen in your case, since you are only using the standard array). An example of this in the wild would be a user who has set up a FR system, but with a USD currency.

Generally, you shouldn't need to use -displayNameForKey:value: for the NSLocaleCurrencyCode and NSLocaleCurrencySymbol, since they both return international strings, not localized strings. Thus, once you have the preferred local, you should be able to get this information just by using -objectForKey:.

The tricky part, in my testing, is that assuming that the locale in the list is sufficient to create a valid currency code and symbol isn't true, instead you need to have a language and country code. Fortunately, +[NSLocale canonicalLanguageIdentifierFromString:] will provide you the right language, which you can then append to the country code (after a _) to create the country/language string that will appropriately result in the currency information being retrieved.

Here's my revised code:

myCountryCode = [[NSLocale ISOCountryCodes] objectAtIndex:row];
appLocale = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier: @"en_US"];
identifier = [NSLocale localeIdentifierFromComponents: [NSDictionary
        dictionaryWithObject: myCountryCode 
        forKey: NSLocaleCountryCode]];
myDictionary = [NSLocale componentsFromLocaleIdentifier: identifier];
myCountryName = [appLocale displayNameForKey:NSLocaleCountryCode 
         value:[myDictionaryobjectForKey:NSLocaleCountryCode]];

// Create the currency language combination and then make our locale
NSString *currencyLocaleLanguage= [NSLocale canonicalLanguageIdentifierFromString: myCountryCode];
NSString *countryLanguage= [NSString stringWithFormat: @"%@_%@", myCountryCode, currencyLocaleLanguage];
NSLocale *currencyLocale = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier: countryLanguage];

localCurrencySymbol = [currencyLocale objectForKey:NSLocaleCurrencySymbol];
currencyCode = [currencyLocale objectForKey:NSLocaleCurrencyCode];

title = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@ %@: %@ (%@)", myCountryCode, myCountryName, localCurrencySymbol, currencyCode];
[currencyLocale release];
[appLocale release];

Upvotes: 5

FluffulousChimp
FluffulousChimp

Reputation: 9185

Try the following test app and adapt as needed

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    NSAutoreleasePool *p = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];

    //  select an arbitrary locale identifier; you could use your row index but your
    //  indexing scheme would be different
    NSString *localeIdentifier = [[NSLocale availableLocaleIdentifiers] objectAtIndex:72];
    //  get the selected locale and the application locale
    NSLocale *selectedLocale = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:localeIdentifier];
    NSLocale *appLocale = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:@"en_US"];
    //  country code and name (in app's locale)
    NSString *countryCode = [selectedLocale objectForKey:NSLocaleCountryCode];
    NSString *countryName = [appLocale displayNameForKey:NSLocaleCountryCode value:countryCode];
    //  symbol and currency code
    NSString *localCurrencySymbol = [selectedLocale objectForKey:NSLocaleCurrencySymbol];
    NSString *currencyCode = [selectedLocale objectForKey:NSLocaleCurrencyCode];
    NSString *title = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@ %@: %@ (%@)", countryCode, countryName, localCurrencySymbol, currencyCode];
    [appLocale release];

    NSLog(@"title = %@",title);

    [p release];
}

This logs the following to the console:

2012-06-09 06:01:08.299 Untitled 2[11668:707] title = ES Spain: € (EUR)

Upvotes: 5

Related Questions