Formatting numbers (decimal places, thousands separators, etc) with CSS

Question

The CSS working group has publish a Draft on Content Formatting in 2008. But nothing new right now.

Unfortunately, it's not possible with CSS currently, but you can use Number.prototype.toLocaleString(). It can also format for other number formats, e.g. latin, arabic, etc.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Number/toLocaleString

Well, for any numbers in Javascript I use next one:

var a = "1222333444555666777888999";
a = a.replace(new RegExp("^(\\d{" + (a.length%3?a.length%3:0) + "})(\\d{3})", "g"), "$1 $2").replace(/(\d{3})+?/gi, "$1 ").trim();

and if you need to use any other separator as comma for example:

var sep = ",";
a = a.replace(/\s/g, sep);

or as a function:

function numberFormat(_number, _sep) {
    _number = typeof _number != "undefined" && _number > 0 ? _number : "";
    _number = _number.replace(new RegExp("^(\\d{" + (_number.length%3? _number.length%3:0) + "})(\\d{3})", "g"), "$1 $2").replace(/(\d{3})+?/gi, "$1 ").trim();
    if(typeof _sep != "undefined" && _sep != " ") {
        _number = _number.replace(/\s/g, _sep);
    }
    return _number;
}

Probably the best way to do so is combo of setting a span with a class denoting your formatting then use Jquery .each to do formatting on the spans when the DOM is loaded...

No, you have to use javascript once it's in the DOM or format it via your language server-side (PHP/ruby/python etc.)

Not an answer, but perhpas of interest. I did send a proposal to the CSS WG a few years ago. However, nothing has happened. If indeed they (and browser vendors) would see this as a genuine developer concern, perhaps the ball could start rolling?

If it helps...

I use the PHP function number_format() and the Narrow No-break Space ( ). It is often used as an unambiguous thousands separator.

echo number_format(200000, 0, "", " ");

Because IE8 has some problems to render the Narrow No-break Space, I changed it for a SPAN

echo "<span class='number'>".number_format(200000, 0, "", "<span></span>")."</span>";

.number SPAN{
    padding: 0 1px; 
}