regular expressions question v.php

[D1G1T4L]

I have a phone field and the way I want to store in the database is just digits.
example: 4154065623

I need a regular expression that will remove spaces/dashes/etc

so for example if a user puts something like
(415)406-56 23 it will turn it into 4154065623

using ereg_replace function I am guessing...

EDIT:

never mind.. I have figured it out on my own

$phone = ereg_replace ('[^0-9]', '' , $phone);

 

[Snowknight26]

$data = "(415)406-56 23";
$filtered = preg_replace("/[^0-9]/","",$data);

That won't help if the user inputs too little or too many numbers though.

 

[eloj]

You shouldn't use ereg_replace(), it's been deprecated a good while now.

 

[BDV]

http://regexlib.com/

 

[BDV]

^(??:[\+]?(?<CountryCode>[\d]{1,3}(?:[ ]+|[\-.])))?[(]?(?<AreaCode>[\d]{3})[\-/)]?(?:[ ]+)?)?(?<Number>[a-zA-Z2-9][a-zA-Z0-9 \-.]{6,})(??:[ ]+|[xX]|(i:ext[\.]?)){1,2}(?<Ext>[\d]{1,5}))?$

 

[tim_m]

^ smilies ftl. looks like someone didn't want to use an xml parser

 

[mikeblas]

You don't need a regex for this. Just replace spaces and dashes with an empty string.

PHP has str_replace(), so

str_replace( array('() -'), '', $yourVariable )

... yields what you want.

 

[DocFaustus]

You don't need a regex for this. Just replace spaces and dashes with an empty string.

PHP has str_replace(), so

str_replace( array('() -'), '', $yourVariable )

... yields what you want.

I'm not sure that is the best idea since you could have bad actors that put "1-800-EAT-SHIT" or something. Regex is just more reliable.

Of course, I have to assume the database field being used is setup to only accept numbers so it probably would just generate an error if they did.

 

[mikeblas]

I'm not sure that is the best idea since you could have bad actors that put "1-800-EAT-SHIT" or something. Regex is just more reliable.

It's not more reliable; it's just less specific. If the OP has things other than dashes and parens that he wants to filter out, it's easy enough to do using str_replace(). And if the list gets long -- to the point where being exclusive is easier -- then it's trivial to write a loop that copies only digits from the input value. I retain my opinion that regex is more than what's needed here.

 

[DocFaustus]

I am sure you are correct about the effectiveness of the code and given the exact params the OP put stated, that should work. Hell I don't know enough of PHP to even disagree about ease of use, but since he specifically mentioned he only wants numbers, I think your second idea would be safer because it is more of a white hat type solution - only take what you want.

Never trust user data.

 

[-BokkeN-]

^ smilies ftl. looks like someone didn't want to use an xml parser

He's just describing the captured variables. You might need those if you want your numbers back.