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Convert an iPhone phone number format for a "dial-able” string



I am building an iphone app that reads a phone number from the address book and dial it (with some other things of course...:)). When I load the phone numbers from the AB they are in this following format: "1 (111) 111-1111" which is not "dial-able" when using this:







fullNumber = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@", @"tel:", phoneNum];







Why is that happening? What would be the best way to approach this? How could I convert the phone number into a string of digits (with no spaces or "-")?





Thanks.


Comments

  1. This will strip out all non-numeric characters:

    phoneNumDecimalsOnly = [[phoneNum componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:[[NSCharacterSet decimalDigitCharacterSet] invertedSet]] componentsJoinedByString:@""];

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  2. To answer your question about removing specific characters from a string... Take a look at the NSString Class Reference specifcally the method stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:withString:

    You could do

    fullNumer = [fullNumber stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"(" withString:@""];
    fullNumer = [fullNumber stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@")" withString:@""];
    fullNumer = [fullNumber stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"-" withString:@""];
    fullNumer = [fullNumber stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@" " withString:@""];


    Obviously not the most efficient... but it should give you an idea of the method and how to strip out specific characters.

    Another option that covers any character other than a number can be seen in the following SO post, this is likely a much better solution to your problem.

    Remove all but numbers from NSString

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