Moneta

Moneta is a library designed to support monetary calculations in a secure manner.

TL;DR

The following simple snippet demonstrates how Moneta can help you writing safe monetary code also in very simple scenarios.

public static void BadCode()
{
    using var moneta = new MonetaContext();
    var unitPrice = moneta.Dollar(1.12m);
    var quantity = 12.43424m;
    var finalPrice = unitPrice * quantity;
    
    Console.WriteLine($"Unit price: {unitPrice}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Quantity: {quantity}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Final price: {finalPrice}");
    
} // an exception will be thrown because rounding errors were unnoticed

public static void GoodCode()
{
    using var moneta = new MonetaContext();
    var unitPrice = moneta.Dollar(1.12m);
    var quantity = 12.43424m;
    var finalPrice = unitPrice * quantity;
    
    Console.WriteLine($"Unit price: {unitPrice}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Quantity: {quantity}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Final price: {finalPrice}");

    if (moneta.HasRoundingErrors)
    {
        // Handle rounding errors as you prefer
        moneta.ClearRoundingErrors();
    }
}

Summary

• Moneta Context
• The Principle of Monetary Value Conservation
  • Rounding Error Detection
• Money
• Supported Operations
  • Split
  • RoundOff
  • Apply
  • Add
  • Subtract
  • Multiply
  • Divide
  • Negate
  • CompareTo
  • Binary Operators (+, -, *, /, <, <=, …)
• Currency
• Rounding Error Detection
• Safe and Unsafe Operations
• Currency System
• Currency Providers
• Exchange Rate Conversion TODO
• Exchange Rate Providers TODO
• Samples TODO
• Dependency Injection TODO

Concepts and Key Features

Moneta Context

A MonetaContext sets the boundaries for safe and coherent monetary operations, ensuring that no rounding errors go unnoticed.

A MonetaContext defines the following:

• The default ICurrency for creating new Money instances. For example, if you exclusively deal with EUR, you can set EUR as the default currency, making the creation of new Money instances more straightforward.
• The ICurrencyProvider used to resolve currencies by code, enabling you to resolve currencies from a database or a web service.
• The default RoundingMode for monetary operations.
• The decimal precision used to detect rounding errors (see RoundingErrorDecimals). By default, all internal operations are rounded to 8 decimal places, but you can change this value up to 28 decimal places.
• A log of operations that have resulted in unnoticed rounding errors (according to the RoundingErrorDecimals value).

The Monetary Value Conservation Principle

In Moneta holds the «Monetary Value Conservation Principle»: no monetary value is created or lost unnoticed during the lifetime of a MonetaContext.

Moneta will provide means to keep track of any monetary value created or lost during the lifetime of a MonetaContext and make it available to the user who can decide how to handle it.

There are basically two main causes of monetary value creation or loss:

• Split or RoundOff Operations: which can produce an unallocated part, both positive or negative depending by the RoundingMode used.
• Floating Point Operations with floating point numbers more precise than the Currency of the Money involved in the operation.

Rounding Error Detection

A rounding error occurs when an operation cannot be performed without losing precision. These errors are influenced not only by the values involved in the operation but also by the RoundingMode and the MonetaContext.RoundingErrorDecimals that is used by the MonetaContext to detect rounding errors.

Important

MonetaContext will prevent you to create any Money that uses a Currency with a number of DecimalPlaces greather than the RoundingErrorDecimals value.

Note

Using a RoundingErrorDecimals equals to the Currency with the highest number of DecimalPlaces involved in your calculus will prevent any rounding error to get noticed.

Every result of an operation involving a floating point operand is rounded to the MonetaContext.RoundingErrorDecimals before the monetary value is computed. Thi value is then rounded accordingly to the decimals required by the Currency of the Money involved. The difference between the two values is the rounding error.

Every safe operation will return a decimal error value or, in the case of the Split and RoundOff, a Money value representing the amount of value unallocated. Unsafe operations, instead, will keep track of the operations and the errors occurred.

Schematically, let's assume that:

• • is the operation performed
• M is the Money involved in the operation
• V is the value (decimal, double or float) involved in the operation
• R is the Money returned by the operation
• E is the error returned by the operation

then the following equation holds for the algebraic operations:

M • V = R + E

More precisely, if we indicate with $M$ the money value and with $value$ the value involved in the operation and $error$ the rounding error, then the following equation holds:

$$\Big\| M \bullet value \Big\|^{RoundingMode}_{RoundingErrorDecimals} = R+error$$

Similarly, in case of Split, if we indicate with $M_0$, … $M_{n-1}$ the $n$ parts of the original value $M$ and with $U$ the unallocated part, then the following equation holds:

$$\sum_{i=0}^n M_i = M + U$$

Note

$error$ and $U$ are positive in case of monetary value lost and negative in case of monetary value created.

Note

The unallocated part $U$ of a Split operation can be positive or negative depending by the rounding algorithm.

Important

error is always a decimal value with MonetaContext.RoundingErrorDecimals decimals at most.

For example, if you perform the operation 1.00 EUR + 0.1234 with rounding mode ToZero or ToEven you will get 1.12 EUR with a rounding error of 0.0034, which is the amount of monetary value lost during the operation. But if you perform the same operation with rounding mode ToPositiveInfinity you will get 1.13 EUR with a rounding error of -0.0066, which is the amount of monetary value created during the operation.

It's up to you to decide which treatment to apply to the rounding errors depending by your domain requirements.

Moneta API Design

Moneta main design goal is to support safe monetary calculations through a fluent algebraic API.

For every supported operation, Moneta provides two set of overloads:

• safe overloads that returns the rounding error or, in the case of the Spilt operations, the unallocated part
• unsafe overloads that doesn't return the created or lost monetary value and relies on the MonetaContext to keep track of it.

The error or unallocated part returned by the safe overloads represents a quantity of the monetary value that has been created or lost during the operation.

Money

Money is Moneta's type for representing monetary values. It consists of a decimal value associated with a Currency.

The supported operations are:

• Split: will split a Money into a list of Money instances according to the specified RoundingMode and number of parts or weights.
• Apply: will apply a function to the Money value and return a new Money instance. There are many variants that accept different kind of functions suitable to transform the Money amount and/or the Currency.
• Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide: will perform the corresponding operation between two Money instances or a Money instance and a number, returning a new Money instance with the same Currency.
• Negate: will negate the Money value and return a new Money instance with the same Currency.
• CompareTo: will compare the Money value with another Money instance or a number. If the Money instances have different Currencies, and the MonetaContext has an IExchangeRateProvider, the Money instances will be converted to the same Currency before the comparison, otherwise an exception will be thrown.

And of course you can also use basic operators such as +, -, *, /, ==, !=, >, >=, <, <=. All the binary operators between a Money instance and a number are unsafe operations (see Safe and Unsafe Operations).

Currency

In Moneta, a Currency is any instance of Currency<TSelf>. There are no strict constraints on what qualifies as a valid currency; you are free to introduce your own currency as long as it fits your domain. The only requirement is that currencies with the same Code are treated as equivalent.

Currency Decimal Places

An important characteristic of a currency is the number of decimal places it supports. When you perform a monetary operation, the result is rounded based on the currency's decimal precision, potentially resulting in rounding errors.

Rounding Errors in Split Operations

Rounding errors in split operations occur when you attempt to divide a Money into parts that cannot be divided fairly according to the RoundingMode used. For example, if you try to divide 1.00 EUR into 3 parts, the result will be 0.33 EUR with a rounding error of 0.01 EUR. Similar situations arise when you perform a weighted split operation using floating point weights.

Rounding Errors in Algebraic Operations

Rounding errors in algebraic operations occur when you perform an operation between a Money and a floating point number with a decimal part that exceeds the decimal places supported by the target Currency. For instance, if you try to add 1.12345678 EUR to 1.12 EUR, the result will be 2.24 EUR with a rounding error of 0.00345678 EUR.

Common Currencies

The Moneta core is equipped with common currencies and provides extension methods to the MonetaContext. These methods aim to simplify the most common use cases, eliminating the need to inject an ICurrencyProvider.

For example, if you operate with standard EUR and USD you can write something like this:

using var moneta = new MonetaContext();
var bucks = moneta.Dollars(100);
var euros = moneta.Euros(100);
var pounds = moneta.PoundingSterling(100);
var yens = moneta.Yen(100);
var yuans = moneta.Yuan(100);

Safe and Unsafe Operations

Moneta's API offers two types of operations: safe and unsafe operations.

Safe operations are operations that return the error of the operation to the caller and relieve the context from tracking rounding errors. The caller is responsible for handling the error in line with domain requirements.

In contrast, unsafe operations do not return the error of the operation, and the context is responsible for keeping track of rounding errors. The caller must check the context for any rounding errors and address them accordingly.

In particular:

• All binary operations between a Money value and a floating point number are unsafe operations.
• All Money.Map operations are unsafe operations.

Supported Operations

In the following table there'is a recap of all the supported operations and their safety. An operation is considered safe if it can generate a rounding error and return it to the caller or it cannot generate a rounding error in any case.

For example, the Split operation provides different overload methods, both safe and unsafe.

Operation	Safe	Unsafe	Notes
MonetaContext.Create	Yes	Yes	Allocate a new Money.
Split	Yes	Yes	Split the value of a Money into a list of Money instances. There are two overloads: one that takes the number of parts and one that takes a list of weights. Split methods, instead of the rounding error, will return the more significative unallocated part as Money.
RoundOff	Yes	Yes	Round off the value of a Money to the monetary unit chosen.
Apply	Yes	Yes	Apply a function to the Money
Add	Yes	Yes	Adds a numeric value or a compatible Money
Subtract	Yes	Yes	Subtracts a numeric value or a compatible Money
Multiply	Yes	Yes	Multiplies for a numeric value
Divide	Yes	Yes	Divides by a numeric value or another Money
Negate	Yes	No	Negates the Money amount
+, -, *, / with floating point numbers	No	Yes	The arithmetic operators. Binary operators between a Money value and a floating point number are unsafe operations.
+, - with Money values with the same Currency or integral numbers or between any kind of UndefinedCurrency	Yes	No	Binary operators between Money values with the same Currency or integral numbers are safe operations
+, - with Money values with UndefinedCurrency with different DecimalPlaces	No	Yes	Binary operators between Money values with UndefinedCurrency a number of DecimalPlaces greather than the value with a defined currency are unsafe.

Currency System

Undefined Currency

The Undefined Currency is a special currency identified by the ISO 4217 code XXX. It represents a Money without a currency. You can create multiple variants of UndefinedCurrency with different DecimalPlaces.

Currency Compatibility and Binary Operations

Two Currencies are considered compatible if they share the same Code.

Binary operations between two Money instances are allowed only if their Currencies are compatible.

Currency Providers

Moneta offers numerous extension points for customizing the library's behavior. One of the most important is the ICurrencyProvider, which enables you to seamlessly integrate your currency system. For example, you can implement an ICurrencyProvider to resolve currencies from a database or a web service.

Moneta provides the following providers:

• NullCurrencyProvider, which doesn't resolve any currency.
• IsoCurrencyProvider, which resolves currencies from the ISO 4217 standard. This provider can be customized to resolve a subset of the standard.
• ChainOfCurrencyProvider, which resolves currencies from a list of other providers, suitable for caching and fallback scenarios.

Exchange Rate Conversion

TBD (To Be Determined)

Exchange Rate Providers

TBD (To Be Determined)

Samples

These samples are available in the Moneta.Samples project.

Sample 1: no rounding errors occurred

using (var context = new MonetaContex(options))
{
	var money = context.CreateMoney(1.00M);

	money += 11;
	money /= 2;
	
	Console.WriteLine($"The final amount is {money}");
} // OK!

Sample 2: handled rounding errors

using (var context = new MonetaContex(options)))
{
	var money = context.CreateMoney(1.00M);

	money += 11;
	money /= 2;
	money += 1.2321; // Unhandled Rounding error
	
	if (context.HasRoundingErrors)
	{
		Console.WriteLine(" > Rounding errors detected");
		foreach (var error in context.RoundingErrors)
		{
			// TODO: Handle rounding errors
			Console.WriteLine($"   Error: {error}");
		}
		context.ClearRoundingErrors();
	}
	
	Console.WriteLine($"The final amount is {money}");
} // OK!

Sample 3: unhanded rounding errors

using (var context = new MonetaContex(options))
{
	var money = context.CreateMoney(1.00M);

	money += 11;
	money /= 2;
	money += 1.2321; // Unhandled Rounding error
	
	Console.WriteLine($"The final amount is {money}");
} // KO! Exception thrown

Sample 4: weighted split with unallocated money and rounding error

using (var context = new MonetaContex(options))
{
    var money = context.CreateMoney(11.11);
    var weights = Enumerable.Repeat(0.333333, 3);

	var split = money.Split(weights, out var unallocated);

	Console.WriteLine($"The original amount is {money}");
	Console.WriteLine($"The allocated amounts are: {string.Join(", ", split)}");
	Console.WriteLine($"The unallocated amount is {unallocated}");
} // OK!

will produce the following output:

The original amount is EUR 11.11
The allocated amounts are: EUR 3.70, EUR 3.70, EUR 3.70
The unallocated amount is EUR 0.01

Sample 5: Round-Off Cash to 0.05 EUR (Cash rounding)

using (var context = new MonetaContex(options))
{
Console.WriteLine("\nSample 5: Rounding the final amount to the nearest 0.05 EUR (Cash rounding)");
var amounts = Enumerable.Repeat(context.CreateMoney(3.37), 17);

	var total = amounts.Aggregate((x, y) => x + y);  // sum up all the amounts
	var cashUnit = context.CreateMoney(0.05); // define the cash unit
	// round off the total to the highest multiple of the cash unit that is less than or equal to the total
	// a kindness to our customers that always save some pennies :)
	var cashTotal = total.RoundOff(cashUnit, MidpointRounding.ToZero, out var unallocated);

	Console.WriteLine($"The original total amount is {total}");
	Console.WriteLine($"The cash total amount is {cashTotal}");
	Console.WriteLine($"The discounted amount is {unallocated}");
} // OK!

Sample 6: Calculating the P/E Ratio

using (var context = new MonetaContex(options))
{
    Console.WriteLine("\nSample 6: Calculating the P/E Ratio");
    var price = context.CreateMoney(100);
    var earnings = context.CreateMoney(10);

	var peRatio = price / earnings;

	Console.WriteLine($"The P/E Ratio is {peRatio}");
} // OK!