Store phoneNumbers in Grails Domain Classes? - grails

Question

I want to store phone numbers in Grails domain classes. I am not sure what is the best way of doing this. Storing as int does not seems to be a good idea because leading zero is impossible for that.
What is the best way to store and validate phone numbers in Grails domain classes?

Answer 1

I would store phone as a String - nullable and blank too. For display purposes, simply provide your own tag in grails's tablib package.
For example, with a property inside some domain class like this:
String phone
And a taglib class like this:
class MyTagLib {
static defaultEncodeAs = [taglib:'html']
def phone334 = { attrs ->
String phone = attrs.phone
def formatted =
"(".concat(phone.substring(0, 3)).concat(") ")
.concat(phone.substring(3, 6)).concat("-").concat(phone.substring(6))
out << formatted
}
}
and a usage like this inside a gsp:
<g:phone334 phone="${theInstance.phone}" />
Then if phone = '4165557799', the output would be displayed like this: [phone].
You can build as many formatters as you want; for example, if your number is 011218213334488 and you need it to look like +(218) 21 333 4488, simply build a formatter for that depending on the length and/or the pattern detected in the input.
You can also build simple validators right there too to make sure for example that all characters are made up of digits and parentheses and dashes, but I don't think taglibs are the right place for that - perform a bit of filtering and validation as suggested in the other posts before getting to displaying what should be correct input material.

Answer 2

You could most probably use matches constraint and store phone numbers as String as there is no predefined constraints for phone numbers. There in matches you can use any regex pattern required according to your needs.
static constraints = {
phone(matches: "^(?:0091|\\+91|0)[7-9][0-9]{9}$")
}
The above regex will work like :-
Begins with 0, +91 or 0091
Followed by a 7-9
Followed by exactly 9 numbers
Must match entire input
You can change it according to your needs.

Answer 3

You can store the phone number as string. To validate the phone number you can use google phone number java library to validate international numbers. Or more easily you can use this grails plugin in your code: https://github.com/ataylor284/grails-phonenumbers . Here is a sample from the plugin home page.
class MyDomain {
String phoneNumber
static constraints = {
phoneNumber(phoneNumber: true)
}
}
Edit:
To validate the number if it is not blank you have to define your custom constraint class which extends PhoneNumberConstraint class.
class CustomPhoneNumberConstraint extends PhoneNumberConstraint{
#Override
protected void processValidate(target, propertyValue, Errors errors) {
//check if phone number is blank
if (propertyValue instanceof String && GrailsStringUtils.isBlank((String)propertyValue)) {
if (!blank) {
super.processValidate(target,propertyValue, errors)
}
}
return true
}
}