Searching for phone numbers in mysql

Question

I have a table which is full of arbitrarily formatted phone numbers, like this

027 123 5644
021 393-5593
(07) 123 456
042123456

I need to sea

Answer 1

if this is something that is going to happen on a regular basis perhaps modifying the data to be all one format and then setup the search form to strip out any non-alphanumeric (if you allow numbers like 310-BELL) would be a good idea. Having data in an easily searched format is half the battle.

Answer 2

As John Dyer said, you should consider fixing the data in the DB and store only numbers. However, if you are facing the same situation as mine (I cannot run a update query) the workaround I found was combining 2 queries.

The "inside" query will retrieve all the phone numbers and format them removing the non-numeric characters.

SELECT REGEXP_REPLACE(column_name, '[^0-9]', '') phone_formatted FROM table_name

The result of it will be all phone numbers without any special character. After that the "outside" query just need to get the entry you are looking for. The 2 queries will be:

SELECT phone_formatted FROM (
    SELECT REGEXP_REPLACE(column_name, '[^0-9]', '') phone_formatted FROM table_name
) AS result WHERE phone_formatted = 9999999999

Important: the AS result is not used but it should be there to avoid erros.

Answer 3

See

http://www.mfs-erp.org/community/blog/find-phone-number-in-database-format-independent

It is not really an issue that the regular expression would become visually appalling, since only mysql "sees" it. Note that instead of '+' (cfr. post with [\D] from the OP) you should use '*' in the regular expression.

Some users are concerned about performance (non-indexed search), but in a table with 100000 customers, this query, when issued from a user interface returns immediately, without noticeable delay.

Answer 4

Is it possible to run a query to reformat the data to match a desired format and then just run a simple query? That way even if the initial reformatting is slow you it doesn't really matter.

Answer 5

i suggest to use php functions, and not mysql patterns, so you will have some code like this:

$tmp_phone = '';
for ($i=0; $i < strlen($phone); $i++)
   if (is_numeric($phone[$i]))
       $tmp_phone .= '%'.$phone[$i];
$tmp_phone .= '%';
$search_condition .= " and phone LIKE '" . $tmp_phone . "' ";

Answer 6

a possible solution can be found at http: //udf-regexp.php-baustelle.de/trac/

additional package need to be installed, then you can play with REGEXP_REPLACE