I've got an NSDecimalNumber from StoreKit's SKProduct class, and I want to convert it to C#'s decimal type to minimize loss of precision. Is there a straightforward way to do such a thing?
I figure my two choices are:
- Assume that I understand the binary implementation of each and do my own bit-wise conversion, or
- Have
NSDecimalNumber give me a string and then have decimal parse it.
I figure option 1 is way too much work and probably even brittle, so I'm inclined to go with option 2. But that doesn't seem like the best I can do, either. (I can live with how slow it'll be, because it happens exceptionally rarely.
Just because this tripped me up and cost me quite some time here's a couple extension methods I now use for conversion between NSDecimal and decimal. This was quite frustrating and I am surprised there is no better way built in.
public static class NumberHelper
{
public static decimal ToDecimal(this NSDecimal number)
{
var stringRepresentation = new NSDecimalNumber (number).ToString ();
return decimal.Parse(stringRepresentation, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
}
public static NSDecimal ToNSDecimal(this decimal number)
{
return new NSDecimalNumber(number.ToString(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)).NSDecimalValue;
}
}
NSDecimal and NSDecimalNumber structures representation are not identical to .NET System.Decimal.
Conversion is always possible but not easy. If performance is not a huge matter then you'll best served by using the string representation to convert between them.
