Currency Decimal Formatting

WebAssist dynamic sample site BlueSkyMusic uses the DECIMAL(19,0) datatype setting in MySQL schema tables for all monetary values. I am using php and MySQL along with DataAssist to create the catalouge. I found that you have to mannually add the text portion "Only $" before the <?PHP> code for the dynamic value. DWCS3 does not support crating a custom data format when using PHP according to Adobe Help docs.

How do you format the value to control the decimal place to display as $0.00 in the catalogue? Is there a way to do this with CSS?

There are 2 steps for that.

First you need to prepare PHP for USD. You can do that at the top of your page anywhere.

<?php setlocale(LC_MONETARY, 'en_US'); ?>

Lastly, you'll want to format your display price as follows...

<?php echo money_format('%(#6n', $row_Recordset['Price']); ?>

I think that should provide you with the output you're looking for..

Thank you Tom for your reply. So it requires php formating. I am on WinXP, and read up fast and found these notes on php.net, which confirms the need to use the function that you recomened:

Note: The function money_format() is only defined if the system has strfmon capabilities. For example, Windows does not, so money_format() is undefined in Windows.
Note: The LC_MONETARY category of the locale settings, affects the behavior of this function. Use setlocale() to set to the appropriate default locale before using this function.

I tried the following:

****

<?php setlocale(LC_MONETARY, 'en_US'); ?>


<div class="WADAResultPrice">Only $<?php echo money_format('%(#6n', $row_WADAproducts["ProdPrice"]); ?></div>

******

ERROR on page when displayed in a browser. I must be missing something in defining the fuction. Please advise if you can see where I went wrong. P&T:

Only $PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function money_format() in {my site directory}shopping\Catalogue_Results.php on line 517

******

Are you sure that using the setlocale() is a wise idea? Additional notes on php.net below indicate to me that it may depend on the local cpu and that would not give a consistanct display of costs for users. It might also explain why I recieved the error message. I might be wrong. I am new to php.

Return Values
Returns the new current locale, or FALSE if the locale functionality is not implemented on your platform, the specified locale does not exist or the category name is invalid.

An invalid category name also causes a warning message. Category/locale names can be found in » RFC 1766 and » ISO 639. Different systems have different naming schemes for locales.
Note: The return value of setlocale() depends on the system that PHP is running. It returns exactly what the system setlocale function returns.

In eCart there is a function that is used to display the currency values, it is:

WA_eCart_DisplayMoney()

It will format a value to display as money including the currency symbol and decimal places. How the currency is formatted with the function will depend on how you have these values setup in your cart object. Here is an example of what the price might look like on a page with this function:

<?php echo WA_eCart_DisplayMoney($eCart1, "25.89"); ?>

This will include the currency character and other formatting that is setup in the cart object.

Thanks Eric. I guess I was jumping ahead. I just want to have the catalogue and user access code process in place ready to integrate with eCart.