[java] How do format a phone number as a String in Java?

I have been storing phone numbers as longs and I would like to simply add hyphens when printing the phone number as a string.

I tried using DecimalFormat but that doesn't like the hyphen. Probably because it is meant for formatting decimal numbers and not longs.

long phoneFmt = 123456789L;
DecimalFormat phoneFmt = new DecimalFormat("###-###-####");
System.out.println(phoneFmt.format(phoneNum)); //doesn't work as I had hoped

Ideally, I would like to have parenthesis on the area code too.

new DecimalFormat("(###)-###-####");

What is the correct way to do this?

Pattern phoneNumber = Pattern.compile("(\\d{3})(\\d{3})(\\d{4})");
// ...
Matcher matcher = phoneNumber(numberAsLineOf10Symbols);
if (matcher.matches) {
    return "(" + matcher.group(1) + ")-" +matcher.group(2) + "-" + matcher.group(3);
}

Kotlin

val number = 088899998888

val phone = number.phoneFormatter()

fun String.phoneFormatter(): String { return this.replace("\\B(?=(\\d{4})+(?!\\d))".toRegex(), "-") }

The result will be 0888-9999-8888

I'd have thought you need to use a MessageFormat rather than DecimalFormat. That should be more flexible.

You can use String.replaceFirst with regex method like

    long phoneNum = 123456789L;
    System.out.println(String.valueOf(phoneNum).replaceFirst("(\\d{3})(\\d{3})(\\d+)", "($1)-$2-$3"));

Using StringBuilder for performance.

long number = 12345678L;

System.out.println(getPhoneFormat(String.valueOf(number)));

public static String getPhoneFormat(String number)
{
    if (number == null || number.isEmpty() || number.length() < 6 || number.length() > 15)
    {
        return number;
    }

    return new StringBuilder("(").append(number.substring(0, 3))
            .append(") ").append(number.substring(3, 6))
            .append("-").append(number.substring(6))
            .toString();

}

The easiest way to do this is by using the built in MaskFormatter in the javax.swing.text library.

You can do something like this :

import javax.swing.text.MaskFormatter;

String phoneMask= "###-###-####";
String phoneNumber= "123423452345";

MaskFormatter maskFormatter= new MaskFormatter(phoneMask);
maskFormatter.setValueContainsLiteralCharacters(false);
maskFormatter.valueToString(phoneNumber) ;

You could also use https://github.com/googlei18n/libphonenumber. Here is an example:

import com.google.i18n.phonenumbers.NumberParseException;
import com.google.i18n.phonenumbers.PhoneNumberUtil;
import com.google.i18n.phonenumbers.Phonenumber;

String s = "18005551234";
PhoneNumberUtil phoneUtil = PhoneNumberUtil.getInstance();
Phonenumber.PhoneNumber phoneNumber = phoneUtil.parse(s, Locale.US.getCountry());
String formatted = phoneUtil.format(phoneNumber, PhoneNumberUtil.PhoneNumberFormat.NATIONAL);

Here you can get the library on your classpath: http://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.googlecode.libphonenumber/libphonenumber

U can format any string containing non numeric characters also to your desired format use my util class to format

usage is very simple

public static void main(String[] args){
    String num = "ab12345*&67890";

    System.out.println(PhoneNumberUtil.formateToPhoneNumber(num,"(XXX)-XXX-XXXX",10));
}

output: (123)-456-7890

u can specify any foramt such as XXX-XXX-XXXX and length of the phone number , if input length is greater than specified length then string will be trimmed.

Get my class from here: https://github.com/gajeralalji/PhoneNumberUtil/blob/master/PhoneNumberUtil.java

DecimalFormat doesn't allow arbitrary text within the number to be formatted, just as a prefix or a suffix. So it won't be able to help you there.

In my opinion, storing a phone number as a numeric value is wrong, entirely. What if I want to store an international number? Many countries use + to indicate a country code (e.g. +1 for USA/Canda), others use 00 (e.g. 001).

Both of those can't really be represented in a numeric data type ("Is that number 1555123 or 001555123?")

You can implement your own method to do that for you, I recommend you to use something such as this. Using DecimalFormat and MessageFormat. With this method you can use pretty much whatever you want (String,Integer,Float,Double) and the output will be always right.

import java.text.DecimalFormat;
import java.text.MessageFormat;

/**
 * Created by Yamil Garcia Hernandez on 25/4/16.
 */

public class test {
    // Constants
    public static final DecimalFormat phoneFormatD = new DecimalFormat("0000000000");
    public static final MessageFormat phoneFormatM = new MessageFormat("({0}) {1}-{2}");

    // Example Method on a Main Class
    public static void main(String... args) {
        try {
            System.out.println(formatPhoneNumber("8091231234"));
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        try {
            System.out.println(formatPhoneNumber("18091231234"));
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        try {
            System.out.println(formatPhoneNumber("451231234"));
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        try {
            System.out.println(formatPhoneNumber("11231234"));
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        try {
            System.out.println(formatPhoneNumber("1231234"));
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        try {
            System.out.println(formatPhoneNumber("231234"));
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        try {
            System.out.println(formatPhoneNumber(""));
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        try {
            System.out.println(formatPhoneNumber(0));
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        try {
            System.out.println(formatPhoneNumber(8091231234f));
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
    // Magic
    public static String formatPhoneNumber(Object phone) throws Exception {

        double p = 0;

        if (phone instanceof String)
            p = Double.valueOf((String) phone);

        if (phone instanceof Integer)
            p = (Integer) phone;

        if (phone instanceof Float)
            p = (Float) phone;

        if (phone instanceof Double)
            p = (Double) phone;

        if (p == 0 || String.valueOf(p) == "" || String.valueOf(p).length() < 7)
            throw new Exception("Paramenter is no valid");

        String fot = phoneFormatD.format(p);

        String extra = fot.length() > 10 ? fot.substring(0, fot.length() - 10) : "";
        fot = fot.length() > 10 ? fot.substring(fot.length() - 10, fot.length()) : fot;

        String[] arr = {
                (fot.charAt(0) != '0') ? fot.substring(0, 3) : (fot.charAt(1) != '0') ? fot.substring(1, 3) : fot.substring(2, 3),
                fot.substring(3, 6),
                fot.substring(6)
        };
        String r = phoneFormatM.format(arr);
        r = (r.contains("(0)")) ? r.replace("(0) ", "") : r;
        r = (extra != "") ? ("+" + extra + " " + r) : r;
        return (r);
    }
}

Result will be

(809) 123-1234
+1 (809) 123-1234
(45) 123-1234
(1) 123-1234
123-1234
023-1234
java.lang.NumberFormatException: empty String
    at sun.misc.FloatingDecimal.readJavaFormatString(FloatingDecimal.java:1842)
    at sun.misc.FloatingDecimal.parseDouble(FloatingDecimal.java:110)
    at java.lang.Double.parseDouble(Double.java:538)
    at java.lang.Double.valueOf(Double.java:502)
    at test.formatPhoneNumber(test.java:66)
    at test.main(test.java:45)
java.lang.Exception: Paramenter is no valid
    at test.formatPhoneNumber(test.java:78)
    at test.main(test.java:50)
(809) 123-1232

To get your desired output:

long phoneFmt = 123456789L;
//get a 12 digits String, filling with left '0' (on the prefix)   
DecimalFormat phoneDecimalFmt = new DecimalFormat("0000000000");
String phoneRawString= phoneDecimalFmt.format(phoneFmt);

java.text.MessageFormat phoneMsgFmt=new java.text.MessageFormat("({0})-{1}-{2}");
    //suposing a grouping of 3-3-4
String[] phoneNumArr={phoneRawString.substring(0, 3),
          phoneRawString.substring(3,6),
          phoneRawString.substring(6)};

System.out.println(phoneMsgFmt.format(phoneNumArr));

The result at the Console looks like this:

(012)-345-6789

For storing phone numbers, you should consider using a data type other than numbers.

You could use the substring and concatenation for easy formatting too.

telephoneNumber = "("+telephoneNumber.substring(0, 3)+")-"+telephoneNumber.substring(3, 6)+"-"+telephoneNumber.substring(6, 10);

But one thing to note is that you must check for the lenght of the telephone number field just to make sure that your formatting is safe.

If you really need the right way then you can use Google's recently open sourced libphonenumber

The worst possible solution would be:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
long tmp = phoneFmt;
sb.append("(");
sb.append(tmp / 10000000);
tmp = tmp % 10000000;
sb.append(")-");
sb.apppend(tmp / 10000);
tmp = tmp % 10000000;
sb.append("-");
sb.append(tmp);

String formatterPhone = String.format("%s-%s-%s", phoneNumber.substring(0, 3), phoneNumber.substring(3, 6), phoneNumber.substring(6, 10));