Converting Float to Dollars and Cents

Question

First of all, I have tried this post (among others): Currency formatting in Python. It has no affect on my variable. My best guess is that it is because I am using Python 3 and that was code for Python 2. (Unless I overlooked something, because I am new to Python).

I want to convert a float, such as 1234.5, to a String, such as "$1,234.50". How would I go about doing this?

And just in case, here is my code which compiled, but did not affect my variable:

money = float(1234.5)
locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, '')
locale.currency(money, grouping=True)

Also unsuccessful:

money = float(1234.5)
print(money) #output is 1234.5
'${:,.2f}'.format(money)
print(money) #output is 1234.5

Answer 1

In Python 3.x and 2.7, you can simply do this:

>>> '${:,.2f}'.format(1234.5)
'$1,234.50'

The :, adds a comma as a thousands separator, and the .2f limits the string to two decimal places (or adds enough zeroes to get to 2 decimal places, as the case may be) at the end.

Answer 2

In python 3, you can use:

import locale
locale.setlocale( locale.LC_ALL, 'English_United States.1252' )
locale.currency( 1234.50, grouping = True )

Output

'$1,234.50'

Answer 3

Building on @JustinBarber's example and noting @eric.frederich's comment, if you want to format negative values like -$1,000.00 rather than $-1,000.00 and don't want to use locale:

def as_currency(amount):
    if amount >= 0:
        return '${:,.2f}'.format(amount)
    else:
        return '-${:,.2f}'.format(-amount)