Search phone numbers in database ignoring special characters

Question

I have a database table of customers where customer\'s phone numbers are stored in a field named phoneNumber.

customerId | customerName | phoneNumber
1               


        

Answer 1

You can use the REGEXP operator (or it's synonym RLIKE) in a WHILE clause. For the regular expression, put in [^0-9]* between each digit of the number you want to find. For instance:

SELECT * FROM customers WHERE
  phoneNumber RLIKE
  '[^0-9]*0[^0-9]*2[^0-9]*1[^0-9]*3[^0-9]*3[^0-9]*8[^0-9]*3[^0-9]*0[^0-9]*3[^0-9]*0[^0-9]*'

It's awful, but it should work.