format for phone number

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format for phone number

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harri.reddy

Posted Wednesday, August 29, 2012 9:32 AM

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hi
i need to craete table which has phone number field,

format (345) 234 - 2345

what is the best data type i can use,int,varchar.

plz suggest me

Post #1351709

Luis Cazares

Posted Wednesday, August 29, 2012 9:43 AM

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It should be char or varchar.
Ideally you should only store the digits and format the phone in the front end. However, you'll need an extra field for extension if needed.

Luis C.
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Post #1351728

ChrisM@Work

Posted Wednesday, August 29, 2012 9:44 AM

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Numeric datatypes are inappropriate because telephone numbers may have embedded spaces, non-numeric characters and leading zero's. Length isn't constant either, so most folks use VARCHAR.

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Post #1351729

Phil Parkin

Posted Wednesday, August 29, 2012 10:31 AM

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Luis Cazares (8/29/2012)

It should be char or varchar.
Ideally you should only store the digits and format the phone in the front end. However, you'll need an extra field for extension if needed.

I can imagine international numbers introducing difficulties to this solution (different display formats, therefore need to parse the country code first in a separate column etc etc).

I'd stick with varchar & use suitable constraints and front-end validation to stop rubbish getting in there.

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Post #1351761

Scott D. Jacobson

Posted Wednesday, August 29, 2012 12:01 PM

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Luis Cazares (8/29/2012)

It should be char or varchar.
Ideally you should only store the digits and format the phone in the front end. However, you'll need an extra field for extension if needed.

This. Believe me, you will be much happier writing code going forward when all you have to deal with is xxxxxxxxxx.

Post #1351803

Luis Cazares

Posted Wednesday, August 29, 2012 12:14 PM

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Phil Parkin (8/29/2012)

Luis Cazares (8/29/2012)

It should be char or varchar.
Ideally you should only store the digits and format the phone in the front end. However, you'll need an extra field for extension if needed.

Display format should be defined for each user, not each phone. If managing international numbers, there should be a column designed for it. I'll prefer to store just the digits and probably in separate fields (according to the different attributes) to allow easy formatting. For me a phone number could be a composite attribute or even an entity, however it can be handled as a simple attribute.

Luis C.
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Post #1351817

CELKO

Posted Wednesday, August 29, 2012 12:34 PM

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some_phone_nbr CHAR(11) NOT NULL
CHECK (some_phone_nbr LIKE '[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]')

The standard for phone number formatting is set by the International Telecommunication Union in [E.123] and [E.164] (see the references below). The standards documents are available for a fee from the ITU [available at no charge since 2010 --Bob.] . A summary is available in the Google (UseNet) discussion group, titled Need ITU-T E.123 summary.

In short, a North American telephone number should look like:

+C-AAA-PPP-NNNN;ext=xxxx

“+” shows where the dialing prefix goes. This is one of either the International Direct Dialing (IDD) prefix (for Canada this is “011″ for overseas dialing) or the National Direct Dialing (NDD) prefix (“1″ for calls within North America, omitted for toll-free calls),
“C” is the Country Code (North America’s CC is “1″, and it is omitted for dialing within North America),
“AAA” is the area code (always required for dialing in Kitchener, Toronto, and other jurisdictions),
“PPP” is the Exchange (or Private Branch Exchange “PBX”; look in the phone book to see which exchanges are supported),
“NNNN” is the local portion of the number,

Note that the sequence “AAA-PPP-NNNN” is called a “local number” and “+C-AAA-PPP-NNNN” is called a “global number”. The “-” (hyphen) is a visual separator, as are “.” (period) , “(” (left bracket) and “)” (right bracket), which dialing applications should ignore.

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Post #1351832

CapnHector

Posted Wednesday, August 29, 2012 6:43 PM

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In my shop we store the 10 digit us number as a VARCHAR(16) (to allow for international numbers) but do not store any country code information or formating with the phone number (xxxxxxxxxx). we look up the country code based on other information in the database.

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Post #1351970

Jeff Moden

Posted Wednesday, August 29, 2012 11:16 PM

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harri.reddy (8/29/2012)

hi
i need to craete table which has phone number field,

format (345) 234 - 2345

what is the best data type i can use,int,varchar.

plz suggest me

I have to chime in with several of the others. Don't store formatted telephone numbers in the database. Do the formatting in the front end if you have one.

A better thing to do would be to break the phone number up into pieces for Area Code, Exchange, and Line Number. Of course, international numbers will require country code (1-3 digits), city code (0 to 4 digits), and line number (1 to 6 digits, IIRC). Well, except for Mexico which uses country code, band, and some other stuff.

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Post #1352006

demonfox

Posted Wednesday, August 29, 2012 11:55 PM

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Use varchar . and don't save the formatted data in the database.
I had faced this issue , and it was a hell of a mess when a new company was acquired and we started using the data of their end. Format of phone number may differ based on the area or region or company, and you might loose flexibility.

why varchar ? I think it's better to do string operations on varchar in sql.

~ demonfox
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