How to convert "12,4" to decimal en-Us culture

Question

I have a decimal value ("133,3") stored in string column in the database, in norway culture.

after that user changed the regional setting to english-Us. when I convert "133,3" to decimal using CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, getting invalid value or error.

is there any best way to handle this scenario in C# application?

regards, Anand

Answer 1

If you know the culture that was in use when persisting the value, you can use it when parsing it, i.e.:

Convert.ToDecimal("133,3", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("no"));

Of course, you are probably better off changing how the data is stored in the database, to use a floating point number of some form.

Answer 2

Regardless of the system culture, if you specify CultureInfo.InvariantCulture you won't be able to parse "133,3" as a decimal to 133.3. The same is true for US English.

You could just specify a Norwegian culture when parsing the value (using the overload of decimal.TryParse which takes an IFormatProvider), or (preferrably) change the field in the database to reflect the real data type (a decimal number) instead.