Phony.normalize exception on '000000' and 'hello'

[glebm]

Phony.normalize('0000000')

=> NoMethodError: undefined method `normalize' for 1:Fixnum

Phony.normalize('hello')

=> NoMethodError: undefined method `normalize' for 1:Fixnum

[floere]

Thanks for reporting. What was your expectation?

[glebm]

Either a more sensible error message or nil (even better)

[floere]

Since I don't want Phony to become the Swiss knife of telephone numbers, the behavior of this method is actually undefined if anything else than a E164 normalizable number is passed in, meaning a number that does not contain enough information to turn it into a E164 number. "+41/44+555///12...34" would be normalizable, while "00000" is not.

When I wrote it, nil sounded very tempting initially. However, that would require me to catch all errors and just return nil instead, losing information in the process that wouldn't be available anymore to the user.

However, in another issue #35 I am working on adding a plausible? / conforms? / valid? method to Phony, which is geared towards checking numbers for plausibility. In combination with that one, returning nil would be more sensible.

Why is the combination important? Currently, if you normalize an almost-E164 number, it will not fail. It only fails if it is too short or too un-numerical. So actually, normalize will fail only sometimes. Again, the behavior is simply undefined. And it's not a method that can be used to test for ok-ness, just for normalizing noisy E164 numbers.

I need to think about this one a bit. If you have some good ideas, please let me know. If not, I will write again here if I make progress. In the meantime, please rescue.

[floere]

I've just released version 1.6.6 which includes an experimental Phony.plausible?(number) method to check if the given number is a plausible E164 number. Cheers! Your examples return false.

[glebm]

Thanks, I can now deploy phony to production :)

[floere]

I'm glad to hear it, Gleb! Please update to the latest version please. Version 1.6.6 is too strict regarding plausibility of numbers.

Closing this now – please reopen or open another issue should there be more.