Anyone got a good validation for validating a phone number? I just
want to make sure that whatever the user enters is somewhat sensical,
and i’d like to be fairly liberal about what kind of a format it’s in.
Joe
actually yes, check it out:
validates_format_of :billing_phone, :billing_fax,
:with => /[0-9]{3}-[0-9]{3}-[0-9]{4}/,
:message => “- Phone numbers must be in xxx-xxx-xxxx format.”
and heres one which lets the above work, but also lets parentheses be
optional, ie (123)-123-1234 would work:
validates_format_of :billing_phone, :billing_fax,
:with => /\(?[0-9]{3}\)?-[0-9]{3}-[0-9]{4}/,
:message => "- Phone numbers must be in xxx-xxx-xxxx format."
–
Scott B.
Web D.
Electro Interactive
Hm, neat. Thanks. That does force the user into putting their phone
number into a specific format, which is generally a usability no-no,
right?
Here’s what I came up with:
def validate
validate_phone_number :home_phone
validate_phone_number :cell_phone
end
private
def validate_phone_number type_of_number
number = self.send type_of_number
return if number.blank?
errors.add(type_of_number, “contains a letter”) if
number.match(/[a-zA-Z]/)
digits_only = number.gsub(/[^\d]/, ‘’)
errors.add(type_of_number, “not long enough”) if digits_only.size <
10
errors.add(type_of_number, “too long”) if digits_only.size > 11
end
In my case, the user doesn’t have to submit a phone number, so I quit
if the phone number is blank.
Otherwise, I check to see if there’s a letter in the number and report
an error if it does. I then strip all non-digits from the phone
number. I then check to see if the size of the digits in the number
is either 10 or 11.
Does that look ok? I think I can take in phone numbers in pretty much
any format the user cares to enter it in by.
You can also restrict it at the client side so that only a phone number
format can be entered instead of making the round trip to discover they
messed up. Nothing “bad” about input masks unless you need more than US
phone numbers.
http://javascript.internet.com/forms/dfilter.html
Bob S.
http://www.railtie.net/
On Thursday, February 02, 2006, at 9:18 PM, Joe Van D. wrote:
Otherwise, I check to see if there’s a letter in the number and report
an error if it does. I then strip all non-digits from the phone
number. I then check to see if the size of the digits in the number
is either 10 or 11.
One thing to consider, though, is the inclusion of an extension in the
phone number.
eg/ 555-555-5555 x555
In this scenario, the “x” breaks the letter check, and the extra 3
digits break the 10 or 11 digit check. I suppose you could just have
them enter an extension into another box, if needed. That simplifies
things.
Then, of course, there are international numbers…
clay.
On 3/02/2006, at 6:22 PM, Bob S. wrote:
Nothing “bad” about input masks unless you need more than US
phone numbers.
There’s everything bad about input masks - it forces the user to
input your way, not how they’re used to. Imagine if every form came
with a handwriting mask so you wrote their way…
Take these for example:
555-555-1234
(555) 555 1234
555.555.1234
They all contain the same information, and each person writes it
their own way. All you need is 5555551234, so let the person input
what they want and check that.
I work in a company that deals with things like this all the time, we
just let people enter whatever they like - after all, the numbers
will be read by another human, not a machine.
–
Phillip H.
[email protected]
http://www.sitharus.com/
On Friday, February 03, 2006, at 9:56 AM, Joe Van D. wrote:
Then, of course, there are international numbers…
What do those generally look like?
That’s the tough part.
The general format is:
(country code) (city/area code) (phone number)
The country code for the US is 1. (Canada is 1 also… somehow we got
lumped together.) Country codes can be anywhere from 1 to 3 (4?)
digits. City/area codes… I have no idea. The final phone number…
also no idea. Each country is a little different.
I used to live in Jakarta, Indonesia… The country code for Indonesia
is (62). City code is (21). Phone numbers could be 6-8 digits.
(Jakarta is a huge city… originally all numbers were 6 digits, and
then they started handing out 7 digit numbers. They quickly ran out of
those and started using 8 digit numbers. Clearly, they need to start
planning ahead.)
So, my old phone number was:
+62-21-781-5555
As with phone extensions, it’s probably best to have the country and
city/area codes entered in a separate box. To add a little more
confusion to the mix, though… people don’t always fully understand how
to translate their local number into an international number. Taking
the Indonesia example again… dialing within Indonesia, you didn’t need
to use the country code. But, for some reason, you had to prepend a ‘0’
onto your city code. So, people would write their phone number like
this:
021-781-5555
So, you’d have to know to drop that ‘0’ when writing your phone number
for international consumption. I’m fairly certain this method is
employed in other countries, too.
Point of all this is… international numbers are tricky, and it would
be a non-trivial excercise writing a filter intelligent enough to
correctly identify an “incorrect” number.
clay.
On 4/02/2006, at 6:56 AM, Joe Van D. wrote:
What do those generally look like?
A string of numbers starting with a +. It’s generally like this:
+[0-9]{1,4} [0-9]{2,5} [0-9]{4-9} (x[0-9]{1-5})?, but it’s just
easier to allow free text, people won’t try anything unless they have
a reason to, and in that case they’d generally lie anyway.
This is one case where user education is often needed. When you
convert your number to an international form you drop the dialling
prefix (normally 0 or 1, most countries use 0) and add a + and your
country code. + being replaced by the international dialling prefix,
normally 00 or 11. You’d be surprised how many people don’t know the
format or their country code.
–
Phillip H.
[email protected]
http://www.sitharus.com/
On 3 Feb 2006 14:58:43 -0000, Clay H. [email protected] wrote:
On Thursday, February 02, 2006, at 9:18 PM, Joe Van D. wrote:
Otherwise, I check to see if there’s a letter in the number and report
an error if it does. I then strip all non-digits from the phone
number. I then check to see if the size of the digits in the number
is either 10 or 11.One thing to consider, though, is the inclusion of an extension in the
phone number.
eg/ 555-555-5555 x555
Hm… good point. I forgot about that.
In this scenario, the “x” breaks the letter check, and the extra 3
digits break the 10 or 11 digit check. I suppose you could just have
them enter an extension into another box, if needed. That simplifies things.Then, of course, there are international numbers…
What do those generally look like?
On 3 Feb 2006, at 19:44, Clay H. wrote:
On Friday, February 03, 2006, at 9:56 AM, Joe Van D. wrote:
Then, of course, there are international numbers…
What do those generally look like?
That’s the tough part.
Nah, you’ve over-complicated it, I think. There is an international
standard for this. Here’s the industry standard for writing phone
numbers:
+XXYYYYPPPPPPP
- means “dial the number for an international number, e.g. ‘0’ if the
country code doesn’t match the country you’re dialling from”
XX is the country code
YYYY is the area code and can be 2, 3, 4, 5… digits long, depending
on locale
PPPPPPP is the number within the area, and again can be any length.
Generally, not including the country code it is rare to see a number
longer than 11 digits. If it is 11 digits, chances are 4 of those are
area code. If it’s 10, 3 of them are likely to be area code. This is
because local phone numbers are rarely more than 7 digits because
Bell realised that humans are no good at remembering patterns longer
than 7 digits (evolutionary psychology has shown this is related to
the ratio of a part of the neural cortex to another part of the
brain, IIRC, but I digress). As a result, everybody else in the World
followed this format (for much the same reason why nearly all
railways in the World are the width of an 1850’s Newcastle coal cart…)
For example, I will reject a shopping cart if it doesn’t let me enter
my mobile as beginning +447740…
All my friends numbers in my mobile are stored in this format, and
yes mobile phones are smart enough to work it all out, so if you’re
in the US you can store your numbers as +1…
The advantage? When I’m in the UK all my numbers in +44 format still
just work. When I travel abroad, the phone and network have a little
cuddle, work it out, and I don’t need to work out what’s going on -
they all still “just work”.
That format should be the format all numbers are stored in if you ask
me. If somebody enters a number (07740) 23… in my site, I
automatically convert it to +44774023… I would advise others do the
same unless you’re dealing with people who need to see it in a
“domestic” format.
–
Paul R.
There is a regex that i used before to check the input of phone number.
^([+])?([^\d]?\d){5,18}$
But i ended using the API of Veriphone it’s much easier.
Your regex matches the test string 00009805-778799-4329. Probably needs a bit of work!