moneycpp

A C++ 17 header-only, cross-platform library for handling monetary values, currencies, rounding and other related features.

Core requirements

The library is intended for being used in a variety of types of application including ERP systems, banking, finance, insurance, games, and others.

The following is a list of its core requirements:

• Provide an API for handling and calculating with monetary amounts.
• Support different numeric capabilities.
• Provide a default set of rounding algorithms and policies and support additional user-defined ones.
• Support the entire ISO 4217 list of currencies.
• Support the entire ISO 3166-1 list of countries.
• It should be possible for users to add new (virtual) currencies and countries.

Overview

The library is built around several core components:

• money that holds a monetary value
• currency_unit that contains currency information for a monetary value as per ISO 4217
• country_unit that contains country information in relation to currencies, as per ISO 3166-1
• rounding algorithms - that specify how values are rounded, and policies - that specify how monetary values are rounded using a rounding algorithm

Library API

Monetary values

A monetary value has two dimensions: the actual amount and the currency that it represents. A monetary value is represented by the money class. The following are examples for working with monetary values:

// create and operate with money values
auto m = make_money(20.0, currency::USD);
m += make_money(10.5, currency::USD);
m *= 2.5;

// round money values
m = rounding_policy_standard(round_ceiling())(m);

// convert between currencies 
auto ex = exchange_money(
   m, 
   currency::EUR, 0.86,
   rounding_policy_standard(round_ceiling()));  

The examples above use the type double for numerical values. This is a floating point type and can only represent exact decimal values for numbers that are a sum of inverse powers of two. That means floating point types can exactly represent values such as 0.5, 1.25, or 42.90625 but cannot do the same for values such as 0.10 or 19.99. Therefore, floating point types are not appropriate for monetary values because they cannot exactly represent most real numbers. This can be an important aspect in financial applications or, in general, in applications that deal with monetary transactions because over time, or over a large number of transactions, the small differences can add up to important values. Because of this, the library supports 3rd party libraries that provide better representations of real numbers, such as boost::multiprecision. All the rounding algorithms are specialized for the boost::multiprecision::cpp_dec_float, aliased as decimal, as shown below.

using decimal = boost::multiprecision::number<boost::multiprecision::cpp_dec_float<50>>;

inline decimal operator""_dec(char const * str, std::size_t)
{ return decimal(str); }

auto m = make_money("20.99"_dec, currency::USD);

auto ex = exchange_money(
   m, 
   currency::EUR, "0.8649"_dec,
   rounding_policy_to_currency_digits(round_half_even()));

Countries and Currencies

The library provides a full database of ISO recognized countries and currencies and functions to look them up. Information about a country is represented by the country_unit class and information about a currency by the currency_unit class. Below are several examples for searching these lists:

// finding a currency
auto cu1 = find_currency("EUR");
auto cu2 = find_currency(978);
assert(cu1 == cu2);
assert(cu1 == currency::EUR);
assert(cu1.value().code == "EUR");

// finding a country
auto cu1 = find_country("US");
auto cu2 = find_country(840);
assert(cu1 == cu2);
assert(cu1 == country::US);
assert(cu1.value().alpha2 == "US")

// finding the (main) currency of a country
auto cu1 = country::find_country_currency(country::RO);
assert(cu1 == currency::RON);

auto cu2 = country::find_country_currency(country::US);
assert(cu2 == currency::USD);

// finding all the currencies from a country as a set
auto s = country::find_country_currencies(country::US);
assert(s.size() == 2);
assert(*s.begin() == currency::USD);
assert(*std::next(s.begin()) == currency::USN);

// finding all the currencies from a country as a range
auto r = country::country_currency_equal_range(
         country::currencies,
         country::US);
assert(std::distance(r.first, r.second) == 2);
assert(r.first->second == currency::USD);
assert(std::next(r.first)->second == currency::USN);

The built-in databases for countries, currencies, and country currencies (available when the HAS_COUNTRY_AND_CURRENCY_DB macro is defined) can be extended with additional units. In this case, you can use overloaded versions of these functions that use iterators to define the range to search. The following example shows how to do so with the currencies database, but the same apply for countries (find_country() overload) and country currencies (find_country_currencies() and country_currency_equal_range() overloads):

std::vector<currency_unit> my_currencies{ currency::currencies };
my_currencies.emplace_back(currency_unit{ "VIR", 1001, 2, "Virtual Currency" });

auto cu1 = find_currency(std::cbegin(my_currencies), std::cend(my_currencies), "VIR");
auto cu2 = find_currency(std::cbegin(my_currencies), std::cend(my_currencies), 1001);

assert(cu1 != std::cend(my_currencies));
assert(cu1 == cu2);
assert(cu1->alpha2 == "VIR");

Rounding

Several rounding algorithms are provided with the library. These algorithms transform a numerical value from a greater precision (e.g. 19.99128) to a lesser precision (e.g. 19.99). In addition to these, any user-defined rounding algorithm can be used with the library. The rounding algorithms, implemented as functors, are as follows:

Name	Description	Functor
None	no rounding	round_none
Up	rounds away from zero	round_up
Down	rounds towards zero	round_down
Ceiling	rounds towards positive infinity	round_ceiling
Floor	rounds towards negative infinity	round_floor
Half up	rounds towards "nearest neighbour" unless both neighbours are equidistant, in which case round up	round_half_up
Half down	rounds towards "nearest neighbour" unless both neighbours are equidistant, in which case round down	round_half_down
Half even	rounds towards the "nearest neighbour" unless both neighbours are equidistant, in which case, round towards the even neighbour	round_half_even
Half odd	rounds towards the "nearest neighbour" unless both neighbours are equidistant, in which case, round towards the odd neighbour	round_half_odd

The following is a table with numerical examples for each rounding algorithm:

Algorithm / Value	-5.5	-2.5	-1.6	-1.1	-1.0	1.0	1.1	1.6	2.5	5.5
Up	-6.0	-3.0	-2.0	-2.0	-1.0	1.0	2.0	2.0	3.0	6.0
Down	-5.0	-2.0	-1.0	-1.0	-1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	2.0	5.0
Ceiling	-5.0	-2.0	-1.0	-1.0	-1.0	1.0	2.0	2.0	3.0	6.0
Floor	-6.0	-3.0	-2.0	-2.0	-1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	2.0	5.0
Half up	-6.0	-3.0	-2.0	-1.0	-1.0	1.0	1.0	2.0	3.0	6.0
Half down	-5.0	-2.0	-2.0	-1.0	-1.0	1.0	1.0	2.0	2.0	5.0
Half even	-6.0	-2.0	-2.0	-1.0	-1.0	1.0	1.0	2.0	2.0	6.0
Half odd	-5.0	-3.0	-2.0	-1.0	-1.0	1.0	1.0	2.0	3.0	5.0

More about these rounding algorithms can be found in the article Rounding Algorithms 101 Redux.

Apart from the rounding algorithms, the library provides several rounding policies that define how a money value should be rounded. The available policies are:

Type name	Description
rounding_policy_none	No rounding is performed
rounding_policy_standard	Rounding to 4 decimal digits
rounding_policy_to_currency_digits	Rounding to the number of digits (i.e. minor unit) as defined for the currency

Any additional user-defined policy can be used instead of the ones supplied with the library.

Using the library

The library is composed of several headers and uses C++ 17 features (such as string_view, optional, structured bindings). You need a compiler that supports these features.

The library works with:

• the built-in floating point types, float, double, and long double (NOT ADVICED!)
• boost::multiprecision library, with particular specializations for boost::multiprecision::cpp_dec_float<50>, aliased as decimal
• any 3rd library provided that you specialize the rounding function object templates

To include the full library of ISO specified currencies and countries you must define the macro HAS_COUNTRY_AND_CURRENCY_DB.

In order to use boost::multiprecision you must:

• define the macro HAS_BOOST_MULTIPRECISION
• make the path to the boost headers available in the include search path

In order to use boost::optional instead of std::optional you must:

• define the macro HAS_BOOST_OPTIONAL
• make the path to the boost headers available in the include search path
• make the path to the boost library files available for the libraries search path

The library is accompanied by unit tests (built with Catch2). CMake is used for creating projects to build and run the unit tests. You can do the following to build it with support for boost::multiprecision:

• clone or download and unzip the moneycpp library
• create a build folder
• download and unzip Boost
• run CMake from the build folder
• open the project in the IDE (such as Visual Studio or Xcode), build the project, and run it

Here is an example for creating a project for VS2017 with boost available at C:\libraries\boost_1_68_0\ (make sure to include the trailing \).

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -G "Visual Studio 15 2017" -DCOUNTRY_AND_CURRENCY_DB=ON -DBOOST_MULTIPRECISION=ON -DBOOST_INCLUDE_DIR=C:\libraries\boost_1_68_0\

Related projects

The following libraries are used:

• Catch2 - unit testing framework
• Boost - optional (but recommended) library