World currencies

Contents

• About
• Usage
• Contributing
• Sources
• License

About

While trying to setup a module that required handling of currency codes, but had trouble finding a complete up-to-date list that was also easily downloadable without having to get an account or pay somewhere. So I decided to roll my own. For now its just these datapoints:

• currency-code : the ISO-4217 Currency code
• symbol : a symbolic (UTF-8) representation of the currency if I was able to find one, the ISO code again otherwise.
• display-name : Can be used to display the currency in a dropdown.
• short-name : Same but shorter.
• name : The name only with letters and w/o spaces.
• numeric-code : ISO-4217 Numeric code (usually the same to ISO 3166-1 numeric code for the corresponding country)
• digits : Number of digits after the decimal separator
  • I got this from (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217#cite_ref-MinorUnits_6-1)[this] Wiki.
  • It has numbers and dots (.). The dot means something like 'not applicable'. I just treat them like 0, but I thought I'd retain the information
• type : Because there are some 'not-a-currency currencies', a type to filter them:
  • cur: Actual currency traded on forex and used by country.
  • xch: Exchange Codes - used to trade (e.g. Silver/Gold/Platinum/Palladium).
  • bmu: Bond Market Unit - Used to trade on bond markets, in which participants issue debt.
  • uoa: Unit of Account - used for accounting between state members.
  • moe: Medium of Exchange - usually reserved for commercial exchanges.
  • cpi: Consumer Price Indicator - used to check price change in consumer prices.
  • tst: Special case reserved for testing.
  • noc: Special case no currency.
  • ... (think I got em all? :))

but if there's a good use case for other fields they can always be added in the future.

Usage

Either clone this repo using:

git clone https://github.com/antiftw/world-currencies.git 

or directly download the file (e.g. using wget):

wget https://github.com/antiftw/world-currencies/blob/main/currencies.json 

Contributing

Since things will inadvertedly change - likely without me noticing because it's regarding a currency I do not use on a daily basis - feel free to create a PR and I will make sure to merge it asap.

Note: When creating PR with new data-fields, please provide data filled in for all countries.

Sources

• FOREX Live - for a list of currency codes
• This stale repo - for some of the missing codes.
• Wikipedia - as a way to verify codes and symbols as well as look up countries that match the codes.

License

MIT. Feel free to use this wherever. See LICENSE for more details.