Format an un-decorated phone number in django?

Question

I've got a DB chock full o' phone numbers as strings, they're all formatted like 1112223333, I'd like to display it as 111-222-3333 in my django template

I know I can do

n = contacts.objects.get(name=name)
n.phone = n.phone[:3] + '-' + n.phone[3:6] + '-' + n.phone[6:]

but is there a better / more pythonic way?

Do you know that they're all North American 10-digit numbers? — Russell Borogove, Sep 08 '11 at 21:55

score 13 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 08 '11 at 22:24

It may be overkill for your use case if all your numbers are formatted the same way, but you might consider using the phonenumbers module. It would allow you to add functionality (e.g. international phone numbers, different formatting, etc) very easily.

You can parse your numbers like this:

>>> import phonenumbers
>>> parsed_number = phonenumbers.parse('1112223333', 'US')
>>> parsed_number
PhoneNumber(country_code=1, national_number=1112223333L, extension=None, italian_leading_zero=False, country_code_source=None, preferred_domestic_carrier_code=None)

Then, to format it the way you want, you could do this:

>>> phonenumbers.format_number(parsed_number, phonenumbers.PhoneNumber())
u'111-222-3333'

Note that you could easily use other formats:

>>> phonenumbers.format_number(parsed_number, phonenumbers.PhoneNumberFormat.NATIONAL)
u'(111) 222-3333'
>>> phonenumbers.format_number(parsed_number, phonenumbers.PhoneNumberFormat.INTERNATIONAL)
u'+1 111-222-3333'
>>> phonenumbers.format_number(parsed_number, phonenumbers.PhoneNumberFormat.E164)
u'+11112223333'

I'm using it, despite the overkill, because the package looks solid and I think it can do a little better job of validation than I'm doing now. My issue started with formatting, but it looks like it'll have other benefits. — Dustin Rasener, Jan 07 '13 at 16:29

score 9 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 05 '14 at 14:25

9

This is quite a bit belated, but I figured I'd post my solution anyway. It's super simple and takes advantage of creating your own template tags (for use throughout your project). The other part of this is using the parenthesis around the area code.

from django import template
register = template.Library()

def phonenumber(value):
    phone = '(%s) %s - %s' %(value[0:3],value[3:6],value[6:10])
    return phone

register.filter('phonenumber', phonenumber)

For the rest of your project, all you need to do is {{ var|phonenumber }}

edited Mar 05 '14 at 14:25

ChrisGPT was on strike

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answered Aug 09 '12 at 18:33

Alex Koziak

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No problem :) I figured this was a bit more targeted to use in Django Templates – Alex Koziak Aug 17 '12 at 22:33
Where would you put this in your django project? A utils app of some kind? – Woody1193 Aug 03 '16 at 04:21
Nevermind, [this](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/howto/custom-template-tags/) really helped – Woody1193 Aug 03 '16 at 04:25

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 08 '11 at 21:44

8

Just one other solution:

n.phone = "%c%c%c-%c%c%c-%c%c%c%c" % tuple(map(ord, n.phone))

or

n.phone = "%s%s%s-%s%s%s-%s%s%s%s" % tuple(n.phone)

answered Sep 08 '11 at 21:44

rumpel

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actually this occasionally brings up the error "not enough arguments for format string" – JKirchartz Sep 14 '11 at 15:21

score 7 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

7

Since we're speaking Pythonic :), it's a good habit to always use join instead of addition (+) to join strings:

phone = n.phone
n.phone = '-'.join((phone[:3],phone[3:6],phone[6:]))

edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

Community

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answered Sep 08 '11 at 21:30

unutbu

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score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 23 '12 at 05:00

def formatPhone(phone):
    formatted = ''
    i = 0

    # clean phone. skip not digits
    phone = ''.join(x for x in phone if x.isdigit())

    # set pattern
    if len(phone) > 10:
        pattern = 'X (XXX) XXX-XX-XX'
    else:
        pattern = 'XXX-XXX-XX-XX'

    # reverse
    phone = phone[::-1]
    pattern = pattern[::-1]

    # scan pattern
    for p in pattern:
        if i >= len(phone):
            break

        # skip non X
        if p != 'X':
            formatted += p
            continue        

        # add phone digit
        formatted += phone[i]
        i += 1

    # reverse again    
    formatted = formatted[::-1]

    return formatted

print formatPhone('+7-111-222-33-44')

7 (111) 222-33-44

print formatPhone('222-33-44')

222-33-44

print formatPhone('23344')

2-33-44

Format an un-decorated phone number in django?

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