HowTo search a string for content?

Rails
1

Obviously not a genius with Ruby.

I simply want to check if the string from an form input is a phone
number, or an email.

I started testing wether the string.class was Bignum or Fixnum. If it
was I presumed it was a phonenumber. Although this works in script/
console, my application dosn’t seem to pass the Bignum and Fixnum
tests and proceeds to the else statement.

So now I wanna try looking for the content in my string.

I thought, hey, ill just look for the “@” sign in the posted string.
But how? I’ve been searching for several hourse. And don’t seem to run
into any solution.

So I’ll go to bed, and cross my fingers.

Thx in advance

Btw, this is what I’m trying:

I’m using a phonenumber or the email as login. Same field.
If the user enters his phonenumber, I wanna make sure it works weather
the user types:

0045xxxxxxxx
45xxxxxxxx

(0045) Danish area code.

def phone(input)
unless input == ############## <------ unless what? Was
thinking, unless @ in input.
value = input.to_s
lenStop = value.length
lenStart = value.length - 8
username = ‘45’ + value[lenStart…lenStop]

    return username
  else
    return input
  end

end

I figure code dosn’t work if user puts spaces in his phonenumber. I
guess that can be fixed with a gsub " ", “”… something like that.

2

David,

I believe that regular expressions is what you may be looking for…

s = “(0045) 444-5555”
=> “(0045) 444-5555”

codes = s.match /((\d+))?\s*(\d{3})(\s*-\s*)?(\d{4})/
=> #<MatchData “(0045) 444-5555” 1:"(0045)" 2:“444” 3:"-" 4:“5555”>

codes[0]
=> “(0045) 444-5555”

codes[1]
=> “(0045)”

codes[2]
=> “444”

codes[4]
=> “5555”

hth…

David L. wrote:

I figure code dosn’t work if user puts spaces in his phonenumber. I
guess that can be fixed with a gsub " ", “”… something like that.

3

On 9 Sep 2008, at 21:24, David L. [email protected] wrote:

Obviously not a genius with Ruby.

I simply want to check if the string from an form input is a phone
number, or an email.

Read up on regular expressions

Fred

4

the others are right to point you to regular expressions–definitely
worth learning.

But to give you a fish, you can use String’s [] method to check for an @
symbol.

if my_string[’@’] then
# my_string has an @ in it.
end

HTH,

-Roy

5

regular expressions on the menu today.

Cuz:

/((\d+))?\s*(\d{3})(\s*-\s*)?(\d{4})/

Makes -200% sense to me currently

Thank you guys

6

Heh–there’s actually a famous regexp (if you can imagine such a thing)
that faithfully tracks the RFA spec for e-mail addresses. It’s
something like half a printed page long and would make a kick-ass
tattoo.

I’m writing from the bus, else I’d google up a link to it.

But lots of much much simpler regexps will handle 99% of valid
addresses. Those are easily googled up…

7

David -

On 11-Sep-08, at 11:13 AM, Pardee, Roy wrote:

Guess Reg Exp can probably define a more accurate pattern for email
validation.

Thx

this is one that works pretty well for us:

validates_format_of :email, :with => /\b[A-Z0-9._%-]+@[A-
Z0-9.-]+.[A-Z]{2,4}\b/i, :if => Proc.new { |user| !user.email.blank?
&& !user.password_being_reset}

it might have some holes

Jodi

8

Hehe… definetly a more simple way to do exactly that. Thank you

Guess Reg Exp can probably define a more accurate pattern for email
validation.

Thx