Phone number validation is essential to ensure that marketing, customer service and sales efforts reach the right people in the right place. But it’s not always easy to get it right. There are a lot of variations in lengths and formats across the globe. And it’s not just a matter of using a standard code like +44 or +1 – some countries have different dialing conventions and special characters that you need to take into account.
The first solution is to use regular expressions (or regex) to verify the format of the number. These typically take into account the country code, the number length and whether or not it ends in a space. However, they don’t necessarily take into account the fact that digits may be represented differently in different locations, such as the use of plus signs in some countries or the lack of a space in others.
Ensuring Global Number Validity: Global Number Validation
Another approach is to rely on a lookup API. This is more comprehensive but can be slow and costly if you need to validate large numbers. It also doesn’t reveal the original carrier or line type and it doesn’t guarantee that the phone is active or even online (i.e. it could be switched off).
There are some other options for global number validation that can be faster and more accurate than relying on a lookup API. One is to utilise a phone number validation plugin that uses multiple, authoritative data sources to return a quality score which quickly signals that the number is valid. The plugin can also reveal information about the carrier, line type (mobile, landline, or VoIP), and, when available, porting details as well as the utc offset between the local time zone of the number and Coordinated Universal Time.
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