How to format a numeric column as phone number in

Question

I have table in the database with a phone number column. The numbers look like this:

123456789

I want to format that to look like this:

123-456-789

Answer 1

If you want to just format the output no need to create a new table or a function. In this scenario the area code was on a separate fields. I use field1, field2 just to illustrate you can select other fields in the same query:

area  phone
213   8962102

Select statement:

Select field1, field2,areacode,phone,SUBSTR(tablename.areacode,1,3) + '-' + SUBSTR(tablename.phone,1,3) + '-' + SUBSTR(tablename.areacode,4,4) as Formatted Phone from tablename

Sample OUTPUT:

columns: FIELD1, FIELD2, AREA, PHONE, FORMATTED PHONE
data:    Field1, Field2, 213,  8962102,  213-896-2102

Answer 2

Updated @sqiller's function for my purposes

CREATE FUNCTION [toolbox].[FormatPhoneNumber] (
    @PhoneNumber VARCHAR(50),
    @DefaultIfUnknown VARCHAR(50)
)
RETURNS VARCHAR(50)
AS
BEGIN
    -- remove any extension
    IF CHARINDEX('x', @PhoneNumber, 1) > 0
        SET @PhoneNumber = SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber, 1, CHARINDEX('x', @PhoneNumber, 1) - 1)

    -- cleanse phone number string
    WHILE PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%',@PhoneNumber) > 0
        SET @PhoneNumber = REPLACE(@PhoneNumber,
                SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%',@PhoneNumber),1),'')

    -- Remove US international code if exists, i.e. 12345678900
    IF SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,1,1) = '1' AND LEN(@PhoneNumber) = 11
        SET @PhoneNumber = SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber, 2, 10)

    -- any phone numbers without 10 characters are set to default
    IF LEN(@PhoneNumber) <> 10
        RETURN @DefaultIfUnknown

    -- build US standard phone number
    SET @PhoneNumber = '(' + SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,1,3) + ') ' +
                SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,4,3) + '-' + SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,7,4)

    RETURN @PhoneNumber
END

Answer 3

You can also try this:

CREATE  function [dbo].[fn_FormatPhone](@Phone varchar(30)) 
returns varchar(30)
As
Begin
declare @FormattedPhone varchar(30)

set     @Phone = replace(@Phone, '.', '-') --alot of entries use periods instead of dashes
set @FormattedPhone =
    Case
      When isNumeric(@Phone) = 1 Then
        case
          when len(@Phone) = 10 then '('+substring(@Phone, 1, 3)+')'+ ' ' +substring(@Phone, 4, 3)+ '-' +substring(@Phone, 7, 4)
          when len(@Phone) = 7  then substring(@Phone, 1, 3)+ '-' +substring(@Phone, 4, 4)
          else @Phone
        end
      When @phone like '[0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]' Then '('+substring(@Phone, 1, 3)+')'+ ' ' +substring(@Phone, 5, 3)+ '-' +substring(@Phone, 8, 4)
      When @phone like '[0-9][0-9][0-9] [0-9][0-9][0-9] [0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]' Then '('+substring(@Phone, 1, 3)+')'+ ' ' +substring(@Phone, 5, 3)+ '-' +substring(@Phone, 9, 4)
      When @phone like '[0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]' Then '('+substring(@Phone, 1, 3)+')'+ ' ' +substring(@Phone, 5, 3)+ '-' +substring(@Phone, 9, 4)
      Else @Phone
    End
return  @FormattedPhone

end

use on it select

(SELECT [dbo].[fn_FormatPhone](f.coffphone)) as 'Phone'

Output will be

Answer 4

As Above users mentioned, those solutions are very basic and they won't work if database has different phone formats like: [phone] 123-456-4564 1234567989 etc

Here is a more complex solution that will work with ANY input given:

    CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[ufn_FormatPhone]
    (@PhoneNumber VARCHAR(32))
RETURNS VARCHAR(32)
AS
  BEGIN
    DECLARE  @Phone CHAR(32)

    SET @Phone = @PhoneNumber

    -- cleanse phone number string
    WHILE PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%',@PhoneNumber) > 0
      SET @PhoneNumber = REPLACE(@PhoneNumber,
               SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%',@PhoneNumber),1),'')

    -- skip foreign phones
    IF (SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,1,1) = '1'
         OR SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,1,1) = '+'
         OR SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,1,1) = '0')
       AND LEN(@PhoneNumber) > 11
      RETURN @Phone

    -- build US standard phone number
    SET @Phone = @PhoneNumber

    SET @PhoneNumber = '(' + SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,1,3) + ') ' +
             SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,4,3) + '-' + SUBSTRING(@PhoneNumber,7,4)

    IF LEN(@Phone) - 10 > 1
      SET @PhoneNumber = @PhoneNumber + ' X' + SUBSTRING(@Phone,11,LEN(@Phone) - 10)

    RETURN @PhoneNumber
  END

Answer 5

Solutions that use SUBSTRING and concatenation + are nearly independent of RDBMS. Here is a short solution that is specific to SQL Server:

declare @x int = 123456789
select stuff(stuff(@x, 4, 0, '-'), 8, 0, '-')

Answer 6

This should do it:

UPDATE TheTable
SET PhoneNumber = SUBSTRING(PhoneNumber, 1, 3) + '-' + 
                  SUBSTRING(PhoneNumber, 4, 3) + '-' + 
                  SUBSTRING(PhoneNumber, 7, 4)

Incorporated Kane's suggestion, you can compute the phone number's formatting at runtime. One possible approach would be to use scalar functions for this purpose (works in SQL Server):

CREATE FUNCTION FormatPhoneNumber(@phoneNumber VARCHAR(10))
RETURNS VARCHAR(12)
BEGIN
    RETURN SUBSTRING(@phoneNumber, 1, 3) + '-' + 
           SUBSTRING(@phoneNumber, 4, 3) + '-' + 
           SUBSTRING(@phoneNumber, 7, 4)
END