How to properly store and lookup areacode from a phone number - php

Question

How do I store areacodes (npa-nxx) in a database for fast lookup?
Here's the deal: I have a variable that contains a phone number and I need to look in a database for the city attached to that phone number.
The problem is, different countries have different formats.
Canada/USA: [phone] (+1 > Country, 905 > Area Code, 555 > City Code)
France: [phone] (+33 > Country, 5 > Areacode, 1 > City, Other numbers > Subscriber number)
and so on (infos based on wikipedia)
I created a table called 'npanxx' that contain the list of area codes, city code and city attached to each one (with the id of the country and the province/state id):
CountryId, RegionId, PrimaryCity, npa, nxx, fnpanxx
1 11 Acton Vale 450 236 +1450236
I am thinking about the following procedure:
Get all country codes from sql to php array
Go through each entry and check if there's a match from the beginning of the phone number
When (If there's) a match is found
Remove the beginning of the phone number
Get all npa-nxx that belong to that contry and put them in a php array
Go through each value of the array to find a matching beginning
When (If there's) a match is found
Remove the beginning of the phone number
Store data in different variables like: $country = 'Canada'; $city = 'Acton Vale'...
etc, etc.
First mistake (I think): To much database requests (the npanxx table contain 3000 records for only one province in Canada)
Second mistake: I'm pretty sure there's no need to go through each and every npa-nxx code
another problem: It's not sure that if the phone number is a France one that this procedure will work.
And... If there's an entry for, let's say 336 and another for 3364, it might give the wrong result.
Do you have any idea how I can solve this problem ? (I don't ask for any code, I don't want to to do the work for me, I would like some clues though)
This is for a personnel project to make donation for Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada and would really like to finish that project :)

Answer 1

I would think maybe some kind of set of reg-exes or other pattern matches to whiddle down your options in terms of search. Just some basic way or "guessing" at the possibilities instead of searching all of them.

Answer 2

Here's a small script I wrote in PHP to return the NPA/NXX as a JSON object in real time from area-codes.com.
It returns some very useful data. It's only for the NANP, so it doesn't do so well trying to discern international calls. For that, I would suggest making a table of all international country codes and the appropriate methods to dial them, internationally.
Additionally, network exchange operators demand an international dial code (like 011 for the USA, or + for cell phones, in general) to figure out if the number is international, and then take the steps, above, to figure out where you're trying to go. You could add this constraint into the input field and be done with it.
If you're trying to just get NPA/NXX information in the North American Numbering Plan, though, this script should be very helpful.
Just an aside, the area-codes.com counts online lookups among their free services, and I have found nothing on the site to suggest that this code violates that policy. But this code can be retooled to gather data from other providers, none-the-less.
<?php
// Small script to return and format all data from the NPA/NXX info site www.area-codes.com
// Returns a JSON object.
error_reporting(E_NONE);
$npa = $_GET['npa'];
$nxx = $_GET['nxx'];
function parseInput($input) {
$v = new DOMDocument();
$v->formatOutput = true;
$v->preserveWhiteSpace = false;
$v->loadHTML($input);
$list = $v->getElementsByTagName("td");
$e = false;
$dataOut = array();
$p = "";
foreach($list as $objNode) {
if (!$e) {
$p = $objNode->nodeValue;
$p = strtolower($p);
$p = preg_replace("%[+ .:()\/_-]%", "", $p);
$p = str_replace("\xc2\xa0", "", $p);
$p = trim($p);
}
else {
if ($p != "") {
$d = trim($objNode->nodeValue);
if ($d != "") $dataOut[$p] = $d;
}
$p = "";
}
$e = !$e;
}
return $dataOut;
}
function getNPANXX($npa, $nxx) {
$url = "www.area-codes.com/exchange/exchange.asp?npa=$npa&nxx=$nxx";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$i = strpos($response, "<h3>AreaCode/Prefix $npa-$nxx Details</h3>");
$i = strpos($response, "<table width=\"100%\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2\" cellspacing=\"0\">", $i);
$e = strpos($response, "</table>", $i);
$scan = substr($response, $i, ($e-$i) + 8);
return parseInput($scan);
}
$result = getNPANXX($npa, $nxx);
if (!isset($result['npaareacode'])) {
$result = array("error" => "invalid");
}
echo json_encode($result);
die;
?>
For the query npanxx.php?npa=202&nxx=520 the JSON outputs as follows:
{
"npaareacode":"202",
"nxxusetype":"WIRELESS",
"nxxprefix":"520",
"nxxintroversion":"11\/16\/2007",
"city":"WASHINGTON",
"state":"DC",
"latitude":"38.901",
"county":"DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA",
"longitude":"-77.0315",
"countypopulation":"0",
"lata":"236",
"zipcode":"20005",
"zipcodecount":"0",
"ratecenter":"WSHNGTNZN1",
"zipcodefreq":"0",
"fips":"11001",
"ocn":"6664",
"observesdst":"Unknown",
"cbsacode":"47900",
"timezone":"Eastern (GMT -05:00)",
"cbsaname":"Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV",
"carriercompany":"SPRINT SPECTRUM L.P."
}
For your example npanxx.php?npa=450&nxx=236 the data returned is a little bit limited because it's Canada and Canada doesn't provide all the FIPS and carrier data like the United States does, but the returned data still quite useful:
{
"npaareacode":"450",
"nxxusetype":"WIRELESS",
"nxxprefix":"236",
"nxxintroversion":"2002-08-04",
"city":"ACTON VALE",
"state":"QC",
"latitude":"45.6523",
"longitude":"-72.5671",
"countypopulation":"51400",
"lata":"850",
"zipcodecount":"0",
"zipcodefreq":"-1",
"observesdst":"Unknown",
"timezone":"Eastern (GMT -05:00)"
}