Formatting currency in Java

Question

In my current project, I am storing a currency value as an int which represents the number of cents. However, when the user inputs this value in a text field, they will most likely expect to enter it as a decimal value. Also, I would like to prepend a dollar sign if the user doesn't enter it manually. How can I leverage a JFormattedTextField to do much of this work for me? Or is there other solutions using pre-existing Swing components so that I don't have to reinvent the wheel by coding this all by hand?

Answer 1

The NumberFormat is also suited to format a currency (see NumberFormat#getCurrencyInstance). And since you need a Format for the JFormattedTextField I would start there.

You can configure the NumberFormat to allow decimal values, and convert it later on in your code to an int without problems