Parsing, validating and creating phone numbers

You can install the phone library as a gem

gem sources -a http://gemcutter.org
gem install phone

Or as a Rails plugin

script/plugin install git://github.com/carr/phone.git

The biggest updating is the namespacing problem fixed that a lot of people were having. You now use phone by refering to

Phoner::Phone

You can initialize a new phone object with the number, area code, country code and extension number

Phoner::Phone.new('5125486', '91', '385')

or

Phoner::Phone.new(:number => '5125486', :area_code => '91', :country_code => '385', :extension => '143')

You can create a new phone object by parsing from a string. Phoner::Phone does it’s best to detect the country and area codes:

Phoner::Phone.parse '+385915125486'
Phoner::Phone.parse '00385915125486'

If the country or area code isn’t given in the string, you must set it, otherwise it doesn’t work:

Phoner::Phone.parse '091/512-5486', :country_code => '385'
Phoner::Phone.parse '(091) 512 5486', :country_code => '385'

If you feel that it’s tedious, set the default country code once (in your config/environment.rb):

Phoner::Phone.default_country_code = '385'
Phoner::Phone.parse '091/512-5486'
Phoner::Phone.parse '(091) 512 5486'

Same goes for the area code:

Phoner::Phone.parse '451-588', :country_code => '385', :area_code => '47'

or

Phoner::Phone.default_country_code = '385'
Phoner::Phone.default_area_code = '47'

Phoner::Phone.parse '451-588'

Like it’s stated above, Phone does it’s best to automatically detect the country and area code while parsing. Do do this, phone uses data stored in data/countries.yml.

Each country code can have a regular expression named area_code that describes how the area code for that particular country looks like.

If an area_code regular expression isn’t specified, the default, Phoner::Phone::DEFAULT_AREA_CODE (correct for the US) is used.

Validating is very relaxed, basically it strips out everything that’s not a number or ‘+’ character:

Phoner::Phone.valid? 'blabla 091/512-5486 blabla'

Formating is done via the format method. The method accepts a Symbol or a String.

When given a string, it interpolates the string with the following fields:

• %c - country_code (385)

• %a - area_code (91)

• %A - area_code with leading zero (091)

• %n - number (5125486)

• %f - first @@n1_length characters of number (configured through Phoner::Phone.n1_length), default is 3 (512)

• %l - last characters of number (5486)

• %x - the extension number

  pn = Phoner::Phone.parse('+385915125486')
  pn.to_s # => "+385915125486"
  pn.format("%A/%f-%l") # => "091/512-5486"
  pn.format("+ %c (%a) %n") # => "+ 385 (91) 5125486"
  

When given a symbol it is used as a lookup for the format in the Phoner::Phone.named_formats hash.

pn.format(:europe) # => "+385 (0) 91 512 5486"
pn.format(:us) # => "(234) 123 4567"
pn.format(:default_with_extension) # => "+3851234567x143"

You can add your own custom named formats like so:

Phoner::Phone.named_formats[:short] = '%A/%n1-%n2'
pn.format(:short) # => 091/512-5486

Parse testing for different countries.

Currently tested on:

AF

Afghanistan

AL

Albania

AR

Argentina

AT

Austria

AU

Australia

BA

Bosnia and Herzegovina

BD

Bangladesh

BE

Belgium

BG

Bulgaria

BO

Bolivia

BR

Brazil

BT

Bhutan

BY

Belarus

BZ

Belize

CA

Canada

CR

Costa Rica

CY

Cyprus

CZ

Czech Republic

DE

Germany

DK

Denmark

DZ

Algeria

EC

Ecuador

EE

Estonia

EG

Egypt

ET

Ethiopia

FI

Finland

FR

France

GB

United Kingdom

GE

Georgia

GH

Ghana

[GR} Greece

GU

Guam

GT

Guatemala

GY

Guyana

HR

Croatia

HU

Hungary

IL

Israel

IN

India

IR

Iran

KE

Kenya

LK

Sri Lanka

NG

Nigeria

NL

Netherlands

NO

Norway

NP

Nepal

PH

Philippines

PK

Pakistan

QA

Qatar

RS

Serbia

SA

Saudi Arabia

SE

Sweden

SI

Slovenia

SV

El Salvador

TO

Tonga

UA

Ukraine

US

United States

ZA

South Africa

ZW

Zimbabwe

More testing is needed to add support for missing countries, and improve support for tested countries. In many cases only minimal testing is done on area codes, local number formats and number length where more exact matching is possible.

The best places to start is to read through the country tests and data/phone_countries.rb

Tomislav Carr, Don Morrison, Michael Squires, Todd Eichel (Fooala, Inc.), chipiga, Etienne Samson, Luke Randall, Wesley Moxam