PHP phone number parser

Question

Building an application for UK & Ireland only but potentially it might extend to other countries. We have built an API and I\'m trying to decided how A) to store phone n

Answer 1

Try http://www.braemoor.co.uk/software/telnumbers.shtml

Answer 2

Use regular expressions. An info page can be found here. It should not be too hard to learn, and will be extremely useful to you.

Here is the regular expresssion for validating phone numbers in the United Kingdom:

^((\(?0\d{4}\)?\s?\d{3}\s?\d{3})|(\(?0\d{3}\)?\s?\d{3}\s?\d{4})|(\(?0\d{2}\)?\s?\d{4}\s?\d{4}))(\s?\#(\d{4}|\d{3}))?$

It allows 3, 4 or 5 digit regional prefix, with 8, 7 or 6 digit phone number respectively, plus optional 3 or 4 digit extension number prefixed with a # symbol. Also allows optional brackets surrounding the regional prefix and optional spaces between appropriate groups of numbers. More can be found here.

This Stackoverflow link should help you see how regular expressions can be used with phone numbers internationally.

Answer 3

?php
$array = array
(
        '0871231234',
        '087 123 1234',
        '087-1231234',
        '+353871231234'
);

foreach($array as $a)
        if(preg_match("/(^[0-9]{10}$)|(^[0-9]{3}\ [0-9]{3}\ [0-9]{4}$)|(^[0-9]{3}\-[0-9]{7}$)|(^\+353[0-9]{9}$)/", $a))
        {
                // removes +35
                $a = preg_replace("/^\+[0-9]{2}/", '', $a);
                // removes first number
                $a = preg_replace("/^[0-9]{1}/", '', $a);
                // removes spaces and -
                $a = preg_replace("/(\s+)|(\-)/", '', $a);
                $a = "00353".$a;
                echo $a."\n";
        }
?>

Answer 4

Design the basic functionality for the UK first add on to it later if needed. You can separate the logic for each country if needed at a later stage. I would tend on the side of cautious optimism, you want to be accepting as many numbers as possible?

1. Strip out spaces, opening and closing brackets and -
2. If number starts with a single 0 replace with 00
3. If number starts with a + replace with a 00
4. If it is numeric and has a total length of between 9 and 11 characters we are 'good'

As for storage you could store it as a string... or as an integer, with a second field that contains the Qty of prefix '0's

Use this for reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_the_United_Kingdom