Format Currency in Ruby on Rails

I was looking for a way to display currency data coming from the database as a long. I found out that Ruby on Rails has a buil-in Module Helper method called
ActionView::Helpers::NumberHelper:number_to_currency which allows one to format a number according to some options:

• :precision - Sets the level of precision (defaults to 2).


• :unit - Sets the denomination of the currency (defaults to "$").


• :separator - Sets the separator between the units (defaults to ".").


• :delimiter - Sets the thousands delimiter (defaults to ",").


• :format - Sets the format of the output string (defaults to "%u%n").

Using this method, we could write something like this:

<%=h number_to_currency @transaction.value, :unit => 'R$', :separator => ",", :delimiter => "." %>

This would work fine, but in this solution we are breaking the DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) rule, because I would need to set the same parameters in every place I was displaying currency values.

A better solution would be to have a helper method which I could use in every piece of code where I need a currency. So I came up with the solution below, which consists in writing my own helper method in app/helpers/application_helper.rb:

module ApplicationHelper

number_to_currency(number,:delimiter => ".", :unit => "R$ ",:separator => ",")
end
end

Now, in my templates I should write something like this:

<%=h real_currency @transaction.value %>

Ain't that easier?

Find this article also on Define Null.