Rails number_to_currency change locale defaults

ActiveSupport number_to_currency helper method may be extremely useful if you deal with prices/wages inside your app. By default number_to_currency uses your current locale default settings which are OK in most cases but sometimes you may want to change them.

In my case, I have to always display trailing zeros for each price. By default number_to_currency doesn't display them at least for a locale which I was using.

I found an option called strip_insignificant_zeros, which is/was not documented in the official number_to_currency docs. Setting it to true for each number_to_currency execution seems like a bad idea (not DRY at all).

Fortunately, you may define global locale default options inside your e.g. config/locales/en.yml like so:

en:
  number:
    currency:
      format:
        strip_insignificant_zeros: false

The same format might be used for other number_to_currency options e.g.

en:
  number:
    currency:
      format:
        delimiter: " "
        format: "%n %u"
        precision: 2
        separator: ","
        strip_insignificant_zeros: false
        unit: "PLN"

One more hint about number_to_currency usage is using:

ActiveSupport::NumberHelper.number_to_currency(123.12)

if you need to use it outside the View.

Sources

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23781427/activeadmin-number-to-currency-helper
• https://apidock.com/rails/ActionView/Helpers/NumberHelper/numbertocurrency
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7237592/number-to-currency-locale-converting