Introducing the Laravel Number Utility Class

Hello everyone, Caen here! I'm excited to share with you a recent addition I made to the Laravel framework (PR #48845) that I believe will simplify your number formatting needs. I've introduced a new Number utility class that provides several new helpers to format numbers, and it should be available in the next Laravel release this week.

As another bonus: the helpers are locale-aware, so you can format numbers according to the current locale, either globally, or on a per-method basis!

Background

In many applications, there's often a need to format numbers according to different requirements, such as displaying them as currency, percentages, or human-readable file sizes. Laravel didn't have a dedicated utility for this, so with the help of the community, I decided to create one. I've been working on this utility class for a a little while now, and am really excited that it was merged into the framework. Let's take a look at what it offers.

The Laravel `Number` Class

Introduction

All methods are part of the Illuminate\Support\Number class:

use Illuminate\Support\Number;

General number formatting

Using the format method, we can format a number according to the current locale.

Number::format(25) // 25
Number::format(100000) // 100,000
Number::format(123456789) // 123,456,789

We can also specify a custom locale to format the number according to that locale's rules.

Number::format(123456789, 'en') // 123,456,789
Number::format(123456789, 'de') // 123.456.789
Number::format(123456789, 'sv') // 123 456 789

Percentage formatting

The formatPercentage method formats a number as a percentage according to the current locale.

Number::toPercentage(25) // 25%
Number::toPercentage((1/3) * 100, precision: 2) // 33.33%

Currency formatting

Here's another fun method used to format various currencies with locale support. Perfect for your webshops!

Number::toCurrency(10) // $10.00
Number::toCurrency(25, currency: 'EUR') // €25.00
Number::toCurrency(5.49, currency: 'EUR', locale: 'de') // 5.49 €

File size formatting

Here is the toFileSize method which actually is the whole reason behind this utility class. I first submitted a PR to add a File::bytesToHuman() helper (PR #48827), which Taylor then suggested we add as part of a new Number class.

Number::toFileSize(1024); // 1 KB
Number::toFileSize(1600, precision: 2); // 1.56 KB
Number::toFileSize(1024 * 1024 * 1024 * 5); // 5 GB

Human readable formatting

Next up is also a quite fun one for when you want something that's more readable than precise. It converts numbers to a human-readable string.

Number::forHumans(1000) // 1 thousand
Number::forHumans(12345) // 12 thousand
Number::forHumans(12345, precision: 3) // 12.345 thousand

Setting the locale

We can set the locale globally using the setLocale method, for example in a service provider:

Number::setLocale('sv');

You can also use the withLocale method which executes the given callback using the specified locale and then restores the original locale:

Number::withLocale('sv', function () {
return Number::format(123456789);
});

Conclusion

I hope this new addition makes your life a bit easier when dealing with number formatting in Laravel. Please free to check out the next Laravel release and incorporate this utility class into your projects. Happy coding!

The post Introducing the Laravel Number Utility Class appeared first on Laravel News.

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