Problem With Php Preg_match Function

[Sarah]

Good afternoon!

 

I am writing a function to try and validate a phone number field using a preg_match function. I am having a hard time understanding how it works but this is what I've got so far. It should accept an entry in this format: xxx-xxx-xxxx and if it isn't, then it should return false.

 

>function checkPhone($element){
 $phoneno = trim($element);
 return !preg_match("(^(.*)[0-9]{3})(.*)([0-9]{3})(.*)([0-9]{4}$)", $phoneno);
}

 

I call this function in my code like this:

>if (!@checkPhone($_POST['phoneno'])){ 
 $msg=$msg."Please enter a valid phone number.<br>";
 $flag = "NOTOK";
}else{
....blah blah blah this code is if the phone number checks out ok
}

 

But when I run the function in my debugger, it shows me this warning:

Debug Warning: validation.php line 29 - preg_match(): Unknown modifier '('

 

 

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

[TCH-Bruce]

Don't know about your code but here is an example I found that does what you want.

 

>A very simple Phone number validation function.
Returns the Phone number if the number is in the xxx-xxx-xxxx format. x being 0-9.
Returns false if missing digits or improper characters are included.

<?
function VALIDATE_USPHONE($phonenumber)
{
if ( (preg_match("/^[0-9]{3,3}[-]{1,1}[0-9]{3,3}[-]{1,1}
 [0-9]{4,4}$/", $phonenumber) ) == TRUE ) {
  return $phonenumber;
} else {
  return false;
  }
}

?>

[Sarah]

Bruce-

First off, thanks for the code.

 

I tried your function and wrote this to call it:

>if (!@VALIDATE_USPHONE($_POST['phoneno'])){
 $msg=$msg."Please enter a valid phone number.<br>";
 $flag = "NOTOK";
}

 

When I entered in my form 123-456-7890 as the phone number, it should have let me submit the form since that is a valid format.

 

However, it said "Please enter a valid phone number." Everything I was putting in was giving me the error.

 

What did I do wrong? Is it something with the return value?

[abinidi]

I'm a VERY NEW php person, but I would probably try putting in a javascript popup or something for testing purposes that will display the value of the $phonenumber variable.

 

I'd want to know how the information was being entered into the variable to see if that helped to illustrate where the problem was.

 

I dunno. Bruce (or somebody else) will probably be able to help you more than that. Just a small suggestion for a PHP beginner. (Who knows. Maybe you already thought of that and this is way over my head...)

[TCH-Bruce]

Bruce-

First off, thanks for the code.

Sorry, I found the code snippit in another forum. I am a PHP noob as well.

 

Maybe one of our more well versed PHP members can point you in the right direction.

[Sarah]

I believe it has something to do with the returning value. But I'm not quite sure how to handle it...

[Sarah]

Well, once again I've figured out my problem. I think it was a combination of the returning values and how the code snippet was originally written. I revised the function to this:

>function VALIDATE_USPHONE($phonenumber){
 if ( (preg_match("/^[0-9]{3,3}[-]{1,1}[0-9]{3,3}[-]{1,1}[0-9]{4,4}$/", $phonenumber) ) == TRUE ){
  		return TRUE;
} else{
	return FALSE;
}
}

 

and my function call to this:

>if (!@VALIDATE_USPHONE($_POST['phoneno'])){
$msg=$msg."Please enter a valid phone number.<br>";
$flag = "NOTOK";
}

 

And it worked fine. Thanks for everyone's help.

[TCH-Bruce]

Glad you got it working

 

And if you are only interested in US phone numbers you can tweak it to

>function VALIDATE_USPHONE($phonenumber){
 if ( (preg_match("/^[3-9]{3,3}[-]{1,1}[0-9]{3,3}[-]{1,1}[0-9]{4,4}$/", $phonenumber) ) == TRUE ){
	   return TRUE;
} else{
	return FALSE;
}
}

 

No US phone number begin with 0 or 1 in the area code.