INPUT DESIGN: How to handle ARABIC numbers?

Arabization in Software Design

You will eventually have to deal with character sets, fonts, RTL support, Hijri calendar, date time and numbers while working on a bilingual project in the Middle East.

Today we will discuss the Arabic numbers input. According to the code charts, U+0660 to U+0669 are ARABIC-INDIC DIGIT values 0 through 9, while U+06F0 to U+06F9 are EXTENDED ARABIC-INDIC DIGIT (Urdu) values 0 through 9.

Visit for more about Unicode: unicodeplus.com

U+06F5 – 'Urdu glyph for number 5'

U+0665 - 'Arabic glyph for number 5'

If you are working with Arabic from the Middle East, use the U+066n series of digits; if you are working with Urdu, use the U+06Fn series of digits.

In case you want to replace the Arabic number with English number, I am sharing the code from one of my apps below:

Example in C#

var dictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>
            {
                {"٠", "0"},{"١", "1"},{"٢", "2"},{"٣", "3"},
                {"٤", "4"},{"٥", "5"},{"٦", "6"},{"٧", "7"},
                {"٨", "8"},{"٩", "9"},

            };

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string digit = input.Substring(this. txtNumber.Text.Length - 1);

char[] NumberChars = "٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩0123456789".ToCharArray();

int indexOf = digit.IndexOfAny(NumberChars);
if (indexOf == -1)
{
  input = input.Remove(input.Length - 1);
  await DisplayAlert("", "الحروف لا تقبل", "تم");
}
else
{
  if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(input) && dictionary.ContainsKey(digit)))
   {
      string englishDigit = dictionary[input];
      input = input.Replace(digit, englishDigit);
   }
}

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You have to enable the Arabic Charset or Unicode while storing these number into the database.

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