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Phonelib is a gem allowing you to validate phone number. All validations are based on Google libphonenumber. Currently it can make basic validations and formatting to e164 international number format and national number format with prefix. But it still doesn't include all Google's library functionality.


Change Log

Change log can be found in repo's wiki

Bug reports

If you discover a problem with Phonelib gem, let us know about it.

Example application

You can see an example of ActiveRecord validation by phonelib working in spec/dummy application of this gem

Getting started

Phonelib was written and tested on Rails >= 3.1. You can install it by adding in to your Gemfile with:

gem 'phonelib'

Run the bundle command to install it.

To set the default country (country names are ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 codes), create a initializer in config/initializers/phonelib.rb:

Phonelib.default_country = "CN"

To use the ability to parse special numbers (Short Codes, Emergency etc.) you can set Phonelib.parse_special. This is disabled by default

Phonelib.parse_special = true

To disable sanitizing of passed phone number (keeping digits only)

Phonelib.strict_check = true

To set different extension separator on formatting, this setting doesn't affect parsing. Default setting is ';'

Phonelib.extension_separator = ';'

To set symbols that are used for separating extension from phone number for parsing use Phonelib.extension_separate_symbols method. Default value is '#;'.

Phonelib.extension_separate_symbols = '#;'

In case phone number that was passed for parsing has "+" sign in the beginning, library will try to detect a country regarding the provided one.

ActiveRecord Integration

This gem adds validator for active record. Basic usage:

validates :attribute, phone: true

This will enable Phonelib validator for field "attribute". This validator checks that passed value is valid phone number. Please note that passing blank value also fails.

Additional options:

validates :attribute, phone: { possible: true, allow_blank: true, types: [:voip, :mobile] }

possible: true - enables validation to check whether the passed number is a possible phone number (not strict check). Refer to Google libphonenumber for more information on it.

allow_blank: true - when no value passed then validation passes

types: :mobile or types: [:voip, :mobile] - allows to validate against specific phone types patterns, if mixed with possible will check if number is possible for specified type

Basic usage

To check if phone number is valid simply run:

Phonelib.valid?('123456789') # returns true or false

Additional methods:

Phonelib.valid? '123456789'      # checks if passed value is valid number
Phonelib.invalid? '123456789'    # checks if passed value is invalid number
Phonelib.possible? '123456789'   # checks if passed value is possible number
Phonelib.impossible? '123456789' # checks if passed value is impossible number

There is also option to check if provided phone is valid for specified country. Country should be specified as two letters country code (like "US" for United States). Country can be specified as String 'US' or 'us' as well as symbol :us.

Phonelib.valid_for_country? '123456789', 'XX'   # checks if passed value is valid number for specified country
Phonelib.invalid_for_country? '123456789', 'XX' # checks if passed value is invalid number for specified country

Additionally you can run:

phone = Phonelib.parse('123456789')

You can pass phone number with extension, it should be separated with ; or # signs from the phone number.

Returned value is object of Phonelib::Phone class which have following methods:

# basic validation methods

# validations for countries
phone.valid_for_country? 'XX'
phone.invalid_for_country? 'XX'

You can also fetch matched valid phone types

phone.types          # returns array of all valid types
phone.type           # returns first element from array of all valid types
phone.possible_types # returns array of all possible types

Possible types:

  • :premium_rate - Premium Rate
  • :toll_free - Toll Free
  • :shared_cost - Shared Cost
  • :voip - VoIP
  • :personal_number - Personal Number
  • :pager - Pager
  • :uan - UAN
  • :voicemail - VoiceMail
  • :fixed_line - Fixed Line
  • :mobile - Mobile
  • :fixed_or_mobile - Fixed Line or Mobile (if both mobile and fixed pattern matches)
  • :short_code
  • :emergency
  • :carrier_specific
  • :sms_services
  • :expanded_emergency
  • :no_international_dialling
  • :carrier_services
  • :directory_services
  • :standard_rate
  • :carrier_selection_codes
  • :area_code_optional

Or you can get human representation of matched types

phone.human_types # return array of human representations of valid types
phone.human_type  # return human representation of first valid type

Also you can fetch all matched countries

phone.countries       # returns array of all matched countries         # returns first element from array of all matched countries
phone.valid_countries # returns array of countries where phone was matched against valid pattern
phone.valid_country   # returns first valid country from array of valid countries
phone.country_code    # returns country phone prefix

Also it is possible to get formatted phone number      # returns formatted e164 international phone number
phone.national           # returns formatted national number with national prefix
phone.area_code          # returns area code of parsed number or nil
phone.local_number       # returns local number
phone.extension          # returns extension provided with phone
phone.full_e164          # returns e164 phone representation with extension
phone.full_international # returns formatted international number with extension

You can pass false to national and international methods in order to get unformatted representaions # returns unformatted international phone
phone.national(false)      # returns unformatted national phone

You can get E164 formatted number

phone.e164 # returns number in E164 format

There is extended data available for numbers. It will return nil in case there is no data or phone is impossible. Can return array of values in case there are some results for specified number

phone.geo_name # returns geo name of parsed phone
phone.timezone # returns timezone name of parsed phone
phone.carrier  # returns carrier name of parsed phone

Phone class has following attributes

phone.original        # string that was passed as phone number
phone.sanitized       # sanitized phone number (only digits left)

How it works

Gem includes data from Google libphonenumber which has regex patterns for validations. Valid patterns are more specific to phone type and country. Possible patterns as usual are patterns with number of digits in number.

Development and tests

Everyone can do whatever he wants, the only limit is your imagination. Just don't forget to write test before the pull request. In order to run test without Rails functionality simply use

bundle exec rake spec

If you want to run including Rails environment, you need to set BUNDLE_GEMFILE while running the spec task, for example:

BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/Gemfile.rails-3.2.x bundle exec rake spec

Gemfiles can be found in gemfiles folder, there are gemfiles for Rails 3.1, 3.2 and 4.