Todd A. Jacobs wrote: > On Wed, Nov 04, 2009 at 09:59:36PM +0000, Colin Law wrote: > >> What is wrong with storing it as a string anyway? > > Strings are less efficient than integers, from a database point of view.
Premature optimization. -- and phone numbers really aren't numbers anyway. > More importantly, though, if you store a number as varchar or text, you > have a much harder time regularizing the output. For example, you > couldn't do this: > > >> foo = ActionView::Base.new > >> foo.number_to_phone 1234567890, :area_code => true > => "(123) 456-7890" Of course you can. It's trivial to do that with a phone number stored as a string. In fact, doing it with an integer would involve converting the integer to a string first. > > with a random string. If you try, you just get back the original string, > like so: > > >> foo.number_to_phone "123/456.7890x55", :area_code => true > => "123/456.7890x55" Then use to_i or write your own helper. Better yet, create a PhoneNumber class and give it a meaningful to_s method. > > The whole idea here is to regularize the data IN THE DATABASE, so that > the output can be customized (and perhaps even changed later) without > having to change the schema. Isn't there some way to strip out the > characters and extra digits *after* form submission but *before* the > assignment to the model object? Yup. You can use an ActiveRecord callback, or (if you create a PhoneNumber class) use composed_of and put this logic in the constructor. > > -- > "Oh, look: rocks!" > -- Doctor Who, "Destiny of the Daleks" Best, -- Marnen Laibow-Koser http://www.marnen.org [email protected] -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
