Question

I am trying to make a way that phone numbers being inserted into the database all go in following the same convention regardless of how they are inserted.

so [phone] and 123.456.7890

would both end up going into the database as 123-456-7890

Im thinking there has to be a function that will allow me to strip all non Integer characters so 123.456.7890 could be turned into 1234567890 and then reformat it as xxx-xxx-xxxx

Perhaps im wrong about this but im thinking php has to have a way of accomplishing something along these lines so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

// Remove any non-number character
$str = preg_replace('/[^\d]/', '', $str);
// Insert dashes
$str = preg_replace('/(\d)(?=(\d{4}|\d{7})$)/', '$1-', $str);

Here’s the fiddle: http://codepad.viper-7.com/pQlwVw