Get Currency Symbol and Currency Code based on ISOCountryCode

Question

There are similar questions to this one from newbies like me in localization, but I couldn't find one that does the trick for me.

Here is my problem. We can get all the ISO country codes in an NSArray with a statement of the form [NSLocale ISOCountryCodes]. Now, for each and every country of those I would like to print the local currency as well as the currency code used in that country. What would be the appropriate way of doing this?

I did the following that does not work in the sense that I get lines of the form US United States: (null) ((null)) when instead I would like to get lines of the form US United States: $ (USD):

myCountryCode = [[NSLocale ISOCountryCodes] objectAtIndex:row];
appLocale = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier: @"en_US"];
identifier = [NSLocale localeIdentifierFromComponents: [NSDictionary
                      dictionaryWithObject: myCountryCode 
                                    forKey: NSLocaleCountryCode]];
myDictionary = [NSLocale componentsFromLocaleIdentifier: identifier];
myCountryName = [appLocale displayNameForKey:NSLocaleCountryCode 
                                       value:[myDictionary
                                             objectForKey:NSLocaleCountryCode]];
localCurrencySymbol = [appLocale displayNameForKey:NSLocaleCurrencySymbol
                      value:[myDictionary objectForKey:NSLocaleCurrencySymbol]];
currencyCode = [appLocale displayNameForKey:NSLocaleCurrencyCode 
                value: [myDictionary objectForKey:NSLocaleCurrencyCode]];
title = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@ %@: %@ (%@)", myCountryCode, myCountryName, localCurrencySymbol, currencyCode];
[appLocale release];

(Above identifier, myCountryCode, myCountryName, localCurrencySymbol, currencyCode, and title are all NSString pointers. Moreover myDictionary is an NSDictionary pointer and appLocale is an NSLocale pointer). Essentially the above code will be in a pickerview where I want to generate the title of each line on the fly.

Thank you very much for your time. Essentially the question is once we have the ISO country code how can we print (in the application locale) the currency symbol and the currency code for that specific country.

Answer 1

For anyone just wanting to get the currency code from the 3 letter iso code ( commonISOCurrencyCodes ). You can simply do this.

NSString *localeId = @"JPY"; //[[NSLocale commonISOCurrencyCodes] objectAtIndex:1];
NSLocale *locale = [NSLocale currentLocale];
NSString *currency = [locale displayNameForKey:NSLocaleCurrencySymbol
                                       value:localeId];
NSLog(@"locale %@ currency %@", localeId, currency);

Prints.

locale JPY currency ¥

Answer 2

Try the following test app and adapt as needed

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    NSAutoreleasePool *p = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];

    //  select an arbitrary locale identifier; you could use your row index but your
    //  indexing scheme would be different
    NSString *localeIdentifier = [[NSLocale availableLocaleIdentifiers] objectAtIndex:72];
    //  get the selected locale and the application locale
    NSLocale *selectedLocale = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:localeIdentifier];
    NSLocale *appLocale = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:@"en_US"];
    //  country code and name (in app's locale)
    NSString *countryCode = [selectedLocale objectForKey:NSLocaleCountryCode];
    NSString *countryName = [appLocale displayNameForKey:NSLocaleCountryCode value:countryCode];
    //  symbol and currency code
    NSString *localCurrencySymbol = [selectedLocale objectForKey:NSLocaleCurrencySymbol];
    NSString *currencyCode = [selectedLocale objectForKey:NSLocaleCurrencyCode];
    NSString *title = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@ %@: %@ (%@)", countryCode, countryName, localCurrencySymbol, currencyCode];
    [appLocale release];

    NSLog(@"title = %@",title);

    [p release];
}

This logs the following to the console:

2012-06-09 06:01:08.299 Untitled 2[11668:707] title = ES Spain: € (EUR)