Using an inline IF statement to format a field value in VisualForce page

Question

I'm trying to do some conditional formatting for the Opportunity Amount field on a VisualForce page that just displays the currently set amount. There is a chance that the amount can be negative (due to carry over credits) and I want to be able to display the Amount in parentheses if it's negative.

I think I'm missing something basic about how to reference an object's fields, but I haven't been able to Google-up an example that could help me with this.

Here's my VF code:

<apex:outputText value="Opportunity Amount"></apex:outputText>
<apex:outputText value="{!IF(opportunity.Amount < 0, '$(' + opportunity.Amount + ')', '$' + opportunity.Amount)}"></apex:outputText>

I know I'm probably missing something very basic here, but would really appreciate some help.

Thank you!

Answer 1

In general, I would suggest to keep the logic at the controller layer, as opposed to the view layer.

I would do something like this

On VF

<apex:outputText value="{!myOppAmount}"/>

In Controller. (Assuming you have an opportunity property already)

public string getMyOppAmmount(){
    string s = (this.Opp.Amount > 0) ? '$' + this.Opp.Amount : '$(' + this.Opp.Amount + ')';
    return s;
}

Answer 2

Please make sure that you convert the number, opportunity.amount, to string using the TEXT() function so that the concatenation can be done.

<apex:outputText value="{!IF(opportunity.Amount < 0, '$(' + TEXT(opportunity.Amount) + ')', '$' + TEXT(opportunity.Amount))}"></apex:outputText>