How to store phone numbers on MySQL databases? [duplicate]

Answer 1

I would say store them as an big integer, as a phone number itself is just a number. This also gives you more flexibility in how you present your phone numbers later, depending on what situation you are in.

Answer 2

I would definitely split them. It would be easy to sort the numbers by area code and contry code. But even if you're not going to split, just insert the numbers into the DB in one certain format. e.g. 1-555-555-1212 Your client side will be thankfull for not making it reformat your numbers.

Answer 3

I would suggest a varchar for the phone number (since phone numbers are known to have leading 0s which are important to keep) and having the phone number in two fields:

Country Code and phone number i.e. for 004477789787 you could store CountryCode=44 and phone number=77789787

however it could be very application specific. If for example you will only store US numbers and want to keep the capability of quickly performing queries like "Get all the numbers from a specific area" then you can further split the phone number field (and drop the country code field as it would be redundant)

I don't think there is a general right and wrong way to do this. It really depends on the demands.

Answer 4

Suggest that you store the number as an extended alphanumeric made up of characters that you wish to accept and store it in a varchar(32) or something like that. Strip out all the spaces , dashes, etc. Put the FORMATTING of the phone number into a separate field (possibly gleaned from the locale preferences) If you wish to support extensions, you should add them in a separate field;

Answer 5

You can use varchar for storing phone numbers, so you need not remove the formatting