Does anyone have any good 'phone' validation routines?

Rails
1

I’m on the final stages of a large project and am now going through
all the model validations. I’ve got many of them and am happy to share
if anyone’s in need.
I’d like to find a good, practical PHONE validation if anyone has one
and is willing to share. I’ve done an exhaustive Google search and
surprisingly, they elude me???
Thank you,
Kathy

2

On Nov 20, 2007 10:39 AM, [email protected] [email protected]
wrote:

I’m on the final stages of a large project and am now going through
all the model validations. I’ve got many of them and am happy to share
if anyone’s in need.
I’d like to find a good, practical PHONE validation if anyone has one
and is willing to share. I’ve done an exhaustive Google search and
surprisingly, they elude me???
Thank you,
Kathy

I usually just remove all the punctuation, then make sure I have the
proper number of digits left.

phone = ‘(615) 867-5309’
=> “(615) 867-5309”
phone.gsub( /[^\d]/, ‘’ ).size == 10
=> true

–
Greg D.
http://destiney.com/

3

On Nov 20, 2007, at 10:51 AM, Greg D. wrote:

I usually just remove all the punctuation, then make sure I have the
proper number of digits left.

That’s what I do too, and it works in my case, but it can be
ambiguous. For instance, using the + convention for international codes,

+506 123-4567
From a US point of view that’s a phone number in Costa Rica, while

(506) 123-4567
is a phone number in Canada.

It’s a stretch, admittedly, but something to be aware of.

4

Hi –

On Tue, 20 Nov 2007, Greg W. wrote:

I wrote this yesterday. Not so much a validation, but rather a
– gw (www.railsdev.ws)

end
You’re doing way too much work :slight_smile: This should give you the same
thing:

def
@phone_number = chars.gsub(/\D/, “”)
end

(And cAmElCaSe removal thrown in free :slight_smile:

The use of [] to set the phone number seems a little odd to me.
Anyway…

elsif (numberLength < 7) || (numberLength == 8) || (numberLength
formattedNumber += ‘-’

else

if @phoneNumber[0,3] != '000'
  formattedNumber += @phoneNumber[0,3] + format
end
formattedNumber += @phoneNumber[3,3]
formattedNumber += format
formattedNumber += @phoneNumber[6,4]

end

Here you’re working too hard, too, and repeating too much code. I
understand that you want to keep the different cases separate, so that
it’s easier to add new cases (rather than come up with some very
intricate way to construct the string that would be too easy to
break). Even with that in mind, you could get this much more
consolidated and unrepetitive:

if format == ‘(’
ac = ‘(’ + areacode + ') ’
sep = ‘-’

elsif format == '/'
  ac = areacode + '/'
  sep = '-'

else
  ac = areacode + format
  sep = format

end

formatted_number << ac if has_areacode?
formatted_number << join_exchange_and_number(sep)

Or if you wanted to you could use a case statement, and/or do the
assignments directly from the case or conditional:

ac, sep = case format
when ‘(’ then [‘(’+areacode + ') ', ‘-’ ]
when ‘/’ then [areacode + ‘/’, ‘-’ ]
else [areacode + format, format ]
end

formatted_number << ac if has_areacode?
formatted_number << join_exchange_and_number(sep)

That would be easy to add cases to. And of course you would need:

def join_exchange_and_number(sep=‘-’)
@phone_number[3,3] << sep << @phone_number[6,4]
end

def has_area_code?
areacode != ‘000’
end

Note: I’ve only tested these code snippets to the extent of looking
quickly at screen output of your examples. Hopefully they’ll give you
some useful ideas.

David

–
Upcoming training by David A. Black/Ruby Power and Light, LLC:

  • Advancing With Rails, Berlin, Germany, November 19-22
  • Intro to Rails, London, UK, December 3-6 (by Skills Matter)
    See http://www.rubypal.com for details!
5

On Nov 20, 2007, at 8:39 AM, [email protected] wrote:

I’m on the final stages of a large project and am now going through
all the model validations. I’ve got many of them and am happy to share
if anyone’s in need.
I’d like to find a good, practical PHONE validation if anyone has one
and is willing to share. I’ve done an exhaustive Google search and
surprisingly, they elude me???

I wrote this yesterday. Not so much a validation, but rather a
PhoneNumber class. Strips all non-numerics upon instantiation.
Intended to store the number as a packed (unformatted) string of
digits and then to be formatted upon display (so your app has a
uniform display of humbers from all input sources). Has a few
different formatting options. Optimized for US style numbers at this
point.

If you’re just interested in the part that strips the non-numerics,
see the [] method near the top.

– gw (www.railsdev.ws)

class PhoneNumber

#------------------------------------------------------------
def initialize(chars=’’)
self.[] chars
end

def set(chars)
self.[] chars
end

def [] (chars)
charSet = chars.dup.split("")
charSet.delete_if do |char|
(char =~ /\d/) == nil
end
@phoneNumber = charSet.join
end

#: -
#------------------------------------------------------------
def to_s
return @phoneNumber.to_s
end

def raw
@phoneNumber
end

def areacode
return @phoneNumber[0,3]
end

def prefix
return @phoneNumber[3,3]
end

def number
return @phoneNumber[6,4]
end

def extension
return @phoneNumber[10,6]
end

#:-
#------------------------------------------------------------
def formatted(format=’-’)
return self.formattedWith(format)
end

#------------------------------------------------------------
def formattedWith(format=’-’)

formats any number with at least 7 digits and a maximum of 16

formattedNumber = String.new
numberLength = @phoneNumber.size

if (numberLength == 7)
@phoneNumber = ‘000’ + @phoneNumber
elsif (numberLength < 7) || (numberLength == 8) || (numberLength
== 9) || (numberLength > 16)
return @phoneNumber
end

if format == ‘(’

 if @phoneNumber[0,3] != '000'
   formattedNumber += '(' + @phoneNumber[0,3] + ') '
 end
 formattedNumber += @phoneNumber[3,3]
 formattedNumber += '-'
 formattedNumber += @phoneNumber[6,4]

elsif format == ‘/’

 if @phoneNumber[0,3] != '000'
   formattedNumber += @phoneNumber[0,3] + '/'
 end
 formattedNumber += @phoneNumber[3,3]
 formattedNumber += '-'
 formattedNumber += @phoneNumber[6,4]

else

 if @phoneNumber[0,3] != '000'
   formattedNumber += @phoneNumber[0,3] + format
 end
 formattedNumber += @phoneNumber[3,3]
 formattedNumber += format
 formattedNumber += @phoneNumber[6,4]

end

if @phoneNumber.size > 10
formattedNumber += ’ x’
formattedNumber += @phoneNumber[10,6]
end

return formattedNumber

end

#------------------------------------------------------------
def unpack
return {
:areacode => self.areacode,
:prefix => self.prefix,
:number => self.number,
:extension => self.extension}
end

#------------------------------------------------------------
def pack(parts)

phArea = ‘’
phPrefix = ‘’
phNumber = ‘’
phExtension = ‘’

if parts.size >= 3
if parts.is_a?(Array)
phArea = parts[0].to_s
phPrefix = parts[1].to_s
phNumber = parts[3].to_s
if parts.size == 4
phExtension = parts[4].to_s
end
elsif parts.is_a?(Hash)
phArea = parts[:areacode].to_s
phPrefix = parts[:prefix].to_s
phNumber = parts[:number].to_s
phExtension = parts[:extension].to_s
end
end

return phArea + phPrefix + phNumber + phExtension

end

#------------------------------------------------------------
def pack!(parts)
@phoneNumber = pack(parts)
end

end

=begin

USAGE EXAMPLES:

home = PhoneNumber.new(‘800/555-2468 x012’)

or

home = PhoneNumber.new
home[‘800/555-2468 x012’]

puts home.raw
puts home.areacode
puts home.prefix
puts home.number
puts home.extension
puts home.formatted
puts home.formattedWith(’(’)
puts home.to_s
puts home.pack({:areacode=>‘555’, :prefix=>‘888’, :number=>‘1212’})
p home.unpack
puts home.pack!({:areacode=>‘555’, :prefix=>‘888’, :number=>‘1212’})
puts home.formatted
=end

6

On Nov 20, 2007, at 11:23 AM, David A. Black wrote:

On Tue, 20 Nov 2007, Greg W. wrote:

def
@phone_number = chars.gsub(/\D/, “”)
end

(And cAmElCaSe removal thrown in free :slight_smile:

Yeah, Ruby does regex stuff like this different than my prev
language, so I still have some cause & effect experimenting to do.
Plus, I have blocks on the brain of course. Thanks for this one.
Cleaner for sure :slight_smile:

I absolutely despise underscores between words in variables – that
one is going to be a very hard one for me, and for the moment I am
ignoring it. I’m sure after I’ve spent more time looking at Ruby
code, I’ll get more accustomed to it. At the moment, it’s slows me
down too much to be constantly fixing typos because I instinctually
camel case. I’ll get over myself eventually.

The use of [] to set the phone number seems a little odd to me.

As the entirely of the object data is just a simple string, I was
trying to find a way to not have to use an attribute during
assignment so it felt like the assignent was to the object as a whole
just like a string would be.

I’m still muddling my way through what Ruby can do (and of course
what should be done regardless of the “can”), and experimenting with
how to make things look & feel a certain way in Ruby.

Anyway…

if format == ‘(’

if @phoneNumber[0,3] != '000'
  formattedNumber += '(' + @phoneNumber[0,3] + ') '
end
formattedNumber += @phoneNumber[3,3]
formattedNumber += '-'
formattedNumber += @phoneNumber[6,4]

Here you’re working too hard, too, and repeating too much code.

Yeah, I know. I started making cases, and hadn’t gotten around to
reducing them. Brand new to Ruby, so not yet equipped to solve every
instance of “hard work” all at the same time. I’ll focus on objective
X even if that leaves objective Y hacked up for the time being. I
actually should have known better than to leave in that particular
dose of obvious repetitive coding, but I just wasn’t focused on that
part of it.

Note: I’ve only tested these code snippets to the extent of looking
quickly at screen output of your examples. Hopefully they’ll give you
some useful ideas.

Yes, I appreciate the critique – thanks.

– gw (www.railsdev.ws)