XSL - rounding/format-number problem

Question

Hi guys,

I'm trying to get the value of a number to 2 dec places from my xml.

XML:<Quantity>0.0050</Quantity>

XSL:<xsl:value-of select="format-number($quantity, '####0.00')" />

However XSL seems to have a problem with this value and outputs 0.00 in one area of the page and 0.01 in the other. Of course in this situation it is favourable to have 0.01 output in all areas.

Another area has the value 4.221 yet the XSL is outputting 4.23.

I do realise that format-number as a method converts a number to a string.

Not sure how to fix this.

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EDIT:

Ok after a bit of mucking around i found that this works:

<xsl:value-of select='format-number( round(100*$quantity) div 100 ,"##0.00" )' />

Via this website

As this guy mentions XSL uses 'bankers rounding' to round to even numbers instead of the bigger ones.

The solution hardly seems elegant, and means adding a ton of extra functions to an already bulky and complicated XSL file. Surely i'm missing something?

Answer 1

Not sure why format would be so inconsistent but from memory the spec for it is...complex.

Meantime, you can use the round function (ref). Which is less than perfect, but is functional. If you need to have a particular number of sig figs you can use THE POWER OF MATHS! and do something like:

<xsl:value-of select="round(yournum*100) div 100"/>