Attempts to extract a possible number from the string passed in. This currently strips all
leading characters that cannot be used to start a phone number. Characters that can be used to
start a phone number are defined in the VALID_START_CHAR_PATTERN. If none of these characters
are found in the number passed in, an empty string is returned. This function also attempts to
strip off any alternative extensions or endings if two or more are present, such as in the case
of: (530) 583-6985 x302/x2303. The second extension here makes this actually two phone numbers,
(530) 583-6985 x302 and (530) 583-6985 x2303. We remove the second extension so that the first
number is parsed correctly.
public static extractPossibleNumber ( integer $number ) : string | ||
$number | integer | the string that might contain a phone number |
return | string | the number, stripped of any non-phone-number prefix (such as "Tel:") or an empty string if no character used to start phone numbers (such as + or any digit) is found in the number |