Here's an utility that rounds (instead of truncating) a double to specified number of decimal places.

For example:

round(200.3456, 2); // returns 200.35

Original version; watch out with this

public static double round(double value, int places) {
    if (places < 0) throw new IllegalArgumentException();

    long factor = (long) Math.pow(10, places);
    value = value * factor;
    long tmp = Math.round(value);
    return (double) tmp / factor;
}

This breaks down badly in corner cases with either a very high number of decimal places (e.g. round(1000.0d, 17)) or large integer part (e.g. round(90080070060.1d, 9)). Thanks to Sloin for pointing this out.

I've been using the above to round "not-too-big" doubles to 2 or 3 decimal places happily for years (for example to clean up time in seconds for logging purposes: 27.987654321987 -> 27.99). But I guess it's best to avoid it, since more reliable ways are readily available, with cleaner code too.

So, use this instead

(Adapted from this answer by Louis Wasserman and this one by Sean Owen.)

public static double round(double value, int places) {
    if (places < 0) throw new IllegalArgumentException();

    BigDecimal bd = BigDecimal.valueOf(value);
    bd = bd.setScale(places, RoundingMode.HALF_UP);
    return bd.doubleValue();
}

Note that HALF_UP is the rounding mode "commonly taught at school". Peruse the RoundingMode documentation, if you suspect you need something else such as Bankers’ Rounding.

Of course, if you prefer, you can inline the above into a one-liner:
new BigDecimal(value).setScale(places, RoundingMode.HALF_UP).doubleValue()

And in every case

Always remember that floating point representations using float and double are inexact. For example, consider these expressions:

999199.1231231235 == 999199.1231231236 // true
1.03 - 0.41 // 0.6200000000000001

For exactness, you want to use BigDecimal. And while at it, use the constructor that takes a String, never the one taking double. For instance, try executing this:

System.out.println(new BigDecimal(1.03).subtract(new BigDecimal(0.41)));
System.out.println(new BigDecimal("1.03").subtract(new BigDecimal("0.41")));

Some excellent further reading on the topic:

• Item 48: "Avoid float and double if exact answers are required" in Effective Java (2nd ed) by Joshua Bloch
• What Every Programmer Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic

If you wanted String formatting instead of (or in addition to) strictly rounding numbers, see the other answers.

Specifically, note that round(200, 0) returns 200.0. If you want to output "200.00", you should first round and then format the result for output (which is perfectly explained in Jesper's answer).

You could use BigDecimal.scale() if you pass the number as a String like this:

BigDecimal a = new BigDecimal("1.31");
System.out.println(a.scale()); //prints 2
BigDecimal b = new BigDecimal("1.310");
System.out.println(b.scale()); //prints 3

but if you already have the number as string you might as well just parse the string with a regex to see how many digits there are:

String[] s = "1.31".split("\\.");
System.out.println(s[s.length - 1].length());

Using BigDecimal might have the advantage that it checks if the string is actually a number; using the string method you have to do it yourself. Also, if you have the numbers as double you can't differentiate between 1.31 and 1.310 (they're exactly the same double) like others have pointed out as well.

No, there is no better way.

Actually you have an error in your pattern. What you want is:

DecimalFormat df = new DecimalFormat("#.00"); 

Note the "00", meaning exactly two decimal places.

If you use "#.##" (# means "optional" digit), it will drop trailing zeroes - ie new DecimalFormat("#.##").format(3.0d); prints just "3", not "3.00".