get the smallest unit of a currency in python

Question

a credit card provider needs the transaction amount in cents or smallest available unit of the currency. since I want the code to be portable I have to get the smallest unit of a given currency and it's factor to the main unit. I've tried to get it from the locale module but i had no luck.

http://docs.python.org/library/locale.html

Example

i have a currency code as described in iso 4217

EUR for Euro

then i need 1 Euro is 100 Eurocents (only the information 1/100, no text is needed)

according to wikipedia there currencies which have more than 2 units like the old pund sterling

Answer 1

Alternatively cou can use following simple mapping module: http://pastebin.com/K7kVXi8P

Save this pastebin into a module within your project (e.g. simple_currency_helper.py) and use the map (or the helper method get_currency_subunit) to get out the currency subunit for a given ISO-Code.

>>> from simple_currency_helper import get_currency_subunit
>>> print get_currency_subunit('TND')
1000