Converting XML string into SQL Server and money type

Question

I have problem with the environment adoption when sending decimal values as XML-strings to the SQL Server, data type Money. I get "Input string was not in the correct format". If I change decimal separator to "comma" and sometimes to "dot" I can get rid of the error. Is there any trick that eliminates the environment variables to have a safe conversion from string-type to money-type?

Bo Wiklund · Answer

Your suggestion seems clever. C# is fantastic; it is just a matter of discovering. I will work on this and see how I can adopt it to my code. Thanks!

tsuman_in · Answer

Awesome!! To get the current user's culture settings you would want to use: CultureInfo ci = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture; Then you can get the NumberFormatInfo System.Globalization.NumberFormatInfo nfi = ci.NumberFormat; If you want to just change the number format to decimal you can use: System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo(en-US false); System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo(en-US false); If you want the last occurrence in a string you can use: myString.Replace( myString.LastIndexOf(.)-1); Sorry I didn't understand exactly what you meant before.

Bo Wiklund · Answer

After some digging in C# manuals I solved the problem in the following way. It would not work if I had thousand separators and no decimal separator in the string but that is not in my case. An interesting trick here was to use the StringBuilder class otherwise strings are Read-only. public string checkDecimalSeparator(string strValue) { StringBuilder newStr = new StringBuilder(strValue); string decimalPoint=System.Globalization.NumberFormatInfo.CurrentInfo.CurrencyDecimalSeparator.ToString(); for (int i=newStr.Length-1; i>=0; i--) // Loop backwards if ((newStr[i]=='.') || (newStr[i]=='')) { if (newStr[i]!=decimalPoint[0]) { newStr[i]=decimalPoint[0]; // Change separator if not maching system separator } break; // Break loop after first separator encounter } return newStr.ToString(); }

tsuman_in · Answer

Are you talkinng about getting the currency separator from System.Globalization.CultureInfo?

Bo Wiklund · Answer

Still the same problem. My idea is to search the string for a Comma or a Dot and then replace the same with the system's decimal separator. I don't know the command to extract the decimal separator from the system; can anyone help me with that? Then I could use double.Parse() or decimal.Parse() I guess but Parse() doesn't recognize a wrong decimal symbol it seems. (I am using an XML Web Service and the string is passed from one system to another)

tsuman_in · Answer

Have you tried double.Parse(moneyString) . There's also Double price = XmlConvert.ToDouble(xmlReader.Value);