MVC3 - 3 decimal places on type double with leading zero

Question

I have a field for weight in Kgs (type double or use something else??). In edit view I would like the user to enter numbers to the thousandth place<

Answer 1

You could use data annotations on your view model:

[DisplayFormat(DataFormatString = "{0:#,##0.000#}", ApplyFormatInEditMode = true)]
public double? Weight { get; set; }

and in your view

@Html.EditorFor(x => x.Weight)

will properly format the value in the input field.

Another possibility is to write a custom editor template for the double type (~/Views/Shared/EditorTemplates/double.cshtml):

@model double?
@Html.TextBox("", Model.HasValue ? Model.Value.ToString("#,##0.000#") : "")

and then in your view:

@Html.EditorFor(x => x.Weight)

or if you don't want to override all templates for all double types in your application you could put this into some custom template location like ~/Views/Shared/EditorTemplates/MyFormattedDouble.cshtml and then in your view:

@Html.EditorFor(x => x.Weight, "MyFormattedDouble")

Personally I prefer the first approach which uses data annotations to control the format of the double values.