[RESOLVED] Telephone number help

[joe69]

When I set up my form and database to input phone numbers, I fear i have not done it right as when I display the number it is all run together ie. xxxxxxxxxx
Should I have done something different in the input form and database? AllI did was make an input box for the number. Any help is always appreciated.

Thanks
Joe

[leatherback]

Hi joe,

You are asking a very generic question to a very specific question. Without having any idea of your form, your processing steps or the ideal display it is not really possible to give you a sensible answer without guessing..

[joe69]

in the Form I have a regluar <input type=text name=phone>
I set up the DB field as varchar(20)
so when the person types in the number and it is submitted to the DB
it goes in exactly how they type it. with spaces dashes or whatever,

I made another page to display the info from the DB
the Phone number displays the way it is put in the DB. I want this:
xxx-xxx-xxxx
How do I make this happen?
I hope thats a little better. if you need more info please let me know

Joe

[NogDog]

Well, first question you'll need to deal with is: what if the user does not enter exactly 10 digits (ignoring space/punctuation for now)? For instance, any of the following could be entered in a 20-character field, and each could be considered valid:

1-555-555-1234
[phone] x5678
[phone]   (international dialing)

So one option would be to just accept that what the user entered is valid and output it the way he/she entered it.

Another option would be to strip out everything that's not a digit/letter, see how many characters are left, and if it's 10 then use substr() to grab the parts and separate them with the desired punctuation; if not 10 then just output what the user entered.

A more draconian option would be to supply separate fields for each part of the number, restricting them to the exact number of digits; so you might have 4 fields on the form: area code (3), exchange (3), number (4), and an optional field for extension (maybe 6 characters just to be safe). This, however, would restrict you to US-style numbering systems, so may not be a good idea if your site is intended to support international business.

[joe69]

Thanks for all the help... The site is just for a local bicycle club so no international business. well we could hope not anyway. I will review all your info and proceed from there

Thanks again
Joe