Question

So using google places reference (detailed web-service) i retrieved a “formatted phone number” its in the form of [phone]. The goal is to call this number. The way I am trying is be using an intent. However, the number above is not a in the format to use Uri parse method. Anyone know a solution to call this number? Is there a different intent or a good way to turn this into Uri data? I have seen the opposite of this done like so:
1234567890 → [phone]

  String formattedNumber = PhoneNumberUtils.formatNumber(unformattedNumber);

But i want to do the reverse of this. any ideas or alternative solutions?
Here is my code:

protected void onPostExecute(Boolean result){
                Intent callintent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_CALL);
                callintent.setData(Uri.parse(phoneNum));
                try {
                    startActivity(callintent);
                }catch (Exception e) {e.printStackTrace();}
            }

Where phoneNum is a formatted phone number string retrieved from GooglePlaces via JSON

To expand on Peotropo’s comment: is there a better way to replace values than the following?

phoneNum = phoneNum.replace(" ", ""); // gets rid of the spaces
phoneNum = phoneNum.replace("-", ""); // gets rid of the -
phoneNum = phoneNum.replace("(", ""); // gets rid of the (
phoneNum = phoneNum.replace(")", ""); // gets rid of the )

Answer 1

This is simple string. Use String.replace() method to remove extra chars.
You can also use replaceAll method:

String phoneNumber = "(123)123-456465"
return phoneNumber.replaceAll("[^0-9]", "");

Not tested docs are here:
replaceAll

Java regular expressions