ASP.NET MVC data annotation for currency format

Question

I have following POCO with Cost as float.

public class CostChart
{
    public string itemType { get; set; }
    public float? Cost{ get; set; }

}
         


        

Answer 1

Have you tried using DataType.Currency:

public class CostChart
{
    public string itemType { get; set; }
    [DataType(DataType.Currency)]
    public float? Cost{ get; set; }

}

Alternatively, you could use DataFormatString like this:

[DisplayFormat(DataFormatString = "{0:C0}")]`
public float? Cost{ get; set; }

But I prefer to set the display format with EditorFor. Here's a great tutorial on Extending Editor Templates for ASP.NET MVC tutorial.

That way, you write the display logic of your currencies in just ONE place, and you don't need to add that extract annotation every single time you want to display a currency amount.

--Edit

To make it work in EditorFor, you can also add ApplyFormatInEditMode = true to the end of the DataFormatString making the line as:

[DisplayFormat(DataFormatString = "{0:C0}", ApplyFormatInEditMode = true)]