HTML DB Format Phone/Fax Numbers

Question

Within my htmldb application I have Phone/Fax # getting pulled from my table. The phone/fax number are formatted like this 2135589645. I would like them to be formatted this way, 213-558-9645. How can I do that in HTML DB?

Answer 1

You could possibly look at using the substr function to help with formatting
assuming you have a column named phone_number
select substr(phone_number,1,3)||'-'||substr(phone_number,4,3)||'-'||substr(phone_number,8,3) as formatted_number
from ...
you will run into problems if the number isn't long enough ie 10 digits. You could check with a length function and then decide how to print it
select case when length(phone_number) = 10 then
substr(phone_number,1,3)||'-'||substr(phone_number,4,3)||'-'||substr(phone_number,8,3)
else
phone_number
end formatted_phone
from(
select '1234567899' phone_number from dual
union all
select '123456789' phone_number from dual)
you may also want to look at the lpad function to pad out short strings
hth
chris