Remove all non-numeric characters from a field

Question

I have a results set from a webform that includes a phone number for each set. the format of this phone number is not enforced (some are xxxxxxxxxx, some are (xxx)xxx-xxxx a

Answer 1

There isn't any "builtin" function that will do this operation in MySQL.

One option is to create your own stored function (if you have sufficient privileges on the database).

 DELIMITER $$

 DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS `uf_only_digits`$$

 CREATE FUNCTION `uf_only_digits`(as_val VARCHAR(65535))
 RETURNS VARCHAR(65535)
 DETERMINISTIC
 BEGIN
   DECLARE retval VARCHAR(65535);
   DECLARE i INT;
   DECLARE strlen INT;
   -- shortcut exit for special cases
   IF as_val IS NULL OR as_val = '' THEN
     RETURN as_val;
   END IF;
   -- initialize for loop
   SET retval = '';
   SET i = 1;
   SET strlen = CHAR_LENGTH(as_val);
 do_loop:
   LOOP
     IF i > strlen THEN
       LEAVE do_loop;
     END IF;
     IF SUBSTR(as_val,i,1) IN ('0','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9') THEN
       SET retval = CONCAT(retval,SUBSTR(as_val,i,1));
     END IF;
     SET i = i + 1;
   END LOOP do_loop;
   RETURN retval;
 END$$

 DELIMITER ;

And be sure to test this before you use it an UPDATE statement.

 SELECT t.foo
      , uf_only_digits(t.foo)
   FROM ( SELECT '' AS foo
          UNION ALL SELECT ' x'
          UNION ALL SELECT 'a1b2'
          UNION ALL SELECT '1-888-555-1212 ext 213'
          UNION ALL SELECT '1-800-FLOWERS'
        ) t

Returns:

 foo                     uf_only_digits(t.foo)  newlen  
 ----------------------  ---------------------  --------
                                                       0
  x                                                    0
 a1b2                    12                            2
 1-888-555-1212 ext 213  18885551212213               14
 1-800-FLOWERS           1800                          4

(The last two rows might give us pause to reconsider what we really want to achieve. If it were me, I would creating a new column, and saving the existing value in it, before I did an UPDATE.)

 -- new column same size as `phone` column
 ALTER TABLE mytable ADD COLUMN orig_phone VARCHAR(40) NULL 
   COMMENT 'original phone value, before update to all digits';

 UPDATE mytable t
    SET t.orig_phone = t.phone ;

 UPDATE mytable t
    SET t.phone = uf_only_digits(t.phone) ;