How to handle Currency in Java 8?

Question

What is the preferred way to handle currencies in Java 8?

The things that could be of interest would be

* Currency Full Name (e.g. United States Dollar)  
* Currency Abbreviation (e.g. USD)  
* Currency Symbol (e.g. $)  

Any other thing that I might be missing here?

What are the best options?

Answer 1

Java 8 still uses java.util.Currency and ISO 4217 codes. From the Javadoc,

Represents a currency. Currencies are identified by their ISO 4217 currency codes. Visit the ISO web site for more information, including a table of currency codes.

The class is designed so that there's never more than one Currency instance for any given currency. Therefore, there's no public constructor. You obtain a Currency instance using the getInstance methods.

Users can supersede the Java runtime currency data by means of the system property java.util.currency.data.