Question

I have some code which attempts to make a call within an application, but it doesn’t seem to be working:

    UIApplication *myApp = [UIApplication sharedApplication];
    NSString *theCall = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"tel://%@",phone];
    NSLog(@"making call with %@",theCall);
    [myApp openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:theCall]];

Sometimes, the variable phone is something such as @"[phone]". How can I make a call with a phone number like this? Do I need to manually extract the numbers out of it and get rid of all the extra punctuation?

Answer 1

Yup. You need to take those out yourself. Or you can use the snippet below…

NSString *cleanedString = [[phoneNumber componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:[[NSCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString:@"0123456789-+()"] invertedSet]] componentsJoinedByString:@""];
NSURL *telURL = [NSURL URLWithString:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"tel:%@", cleanedString]];

Note: you may be tempted to use -stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:, but that one only removes characters at the start and the end of the string, not if they appear in the middle.