.net - C# Price Validation using regular expression other way

Question

As part of my work,I need to read price values from Excel sheet . I need to implement

• Prices: Non-numeric characters in Price not allowed
• price should be valid number for price like int,decimal,double etc like 10,10.00,10,233 valid, -10,-10.00,-10,2333.00 etc are invalid
• Prices: Price format (dots, comma's, decimals)
• Zero and negative price values are not allowed
• Need to check price value type (number type like int,float,decimal etc but will save in database in money format)

What datatype I should we choose for Price ? decimal or double or anyother ? In database I took database field type as money.

Answer 1

I do not think you need any regex if you just need to validate price numbers in C#.

I'd suggest using Decimal type, here you can find why. The Decimal class contains a static TryParse method that can be used to validate numbers as valid decimal numbers. Here is a slightly modified example from MSDN (I decided to go with InvariantCulture, but it depends on whether your DB contains currencies in EN-US format or not):

var validated = false;
decimal number;
// Parse currency value using current culture. 
var value = "1,097.63";
var style = System.Globalization.NumberStyles.Number;
var culture = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture;
if (!Decimal.TryParse(value, style, culture, out number))
    if (number > 0)    // Check if the value is not negative or zero
        validated = true;