How to set decimal separators in ASP.NET MVC controllers?

Question

I'm working with the NerdDinner application trying to teach myself ASP.NET MVC. However, I have stumbled upon a problem with globalization, where my server presents floating point numbers with a comma as the decimal separator, but Virtual Earth map requires them with dots, which causes some problems.

I have already solved the issue with the mapping JavaScript in my views, but if I now try to post an edited dinner entry with dots as decimal separators the controller fails (throwing InvalidOperationException) when updating the model (in the UpdateModel() metod). I feel like I must set the proper culture somewhere in the controller as well, I tried it in OnActionExecuting() but that didn't help.

Answer 1

Set this in your web.config

<globalization uiCulture="en" culture="en-US" />

You appear to be using a server that is setup with a language that uses comma's instead of decimal places. You can adjust the culture to one that uses the comma's in a way that your application is designed, such as en-US.

Answer 2

Can you parse the text using the invariant culture - sorry, I don't have the NerdDinner code in fornt of me, but if you are passing in dot-separated decimals than the parsing should be OK if you tell it to use the invariant culture. E.g.

 float i = float.Parse("0.1", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

Edit. I suspect that this is a bug in the NerdDinner code by the way, along the same lines as your previous problem.