Re: [PHP] global address collection

Actually, phone numbers should not be prefixed with 00. The prefix for
international dialing depends on the local phone regulations and it is
different in different countries (for example, 011 in the USA). The
recommendation from the telephone union (http://www.itu.int/) is to use a
plus sign to indicate that the phone number starts with the country prefix.
Thus, it would be: +44 1623 123456 or +1 408 555 1212. Americans also get
often confused because the first 1 is both the country code for the US,
Canada and a good chunk of the Caribbean and it is, at the same time, the
prefix they use to dial national long distance. That's why the + is
important.

In most of the world, the leading zeros are like ../. You can thing of local phone numbers as your current directory. If you want to dial another area code, you first dial a zero, which is like using ../ in a file system, and then the area code, like the folder for that local number folder. If you want to dial international, you dial 00, which is like doing ../../, which gets you to the world root (eventually there might be three zeros to dial interplanetary!) and then dial the 'folder name' of the other country. Which reminds me of an observation by Arthur C Clarke that once humankind becomes an intergalactic civilization each group will lose communication with the rest, can you just imagine what phone numbers might be! (Brits always had a peculiar sense of humor)

There is no mandatory format to separate international dialing prefix,
country code, area code and actual number, it is better to have them
separated at least with a blank space, but there is no standard regarding
that and none should automatically impossed, the spacing provided by the
user should be respected. Once again Americans are use to see their numbers
as 1-408-555-1212 because all their area codes are 3 digits long and all the
local numbers contain 7 digits grouped as 3 and 4, but most countries use a
variable number of digits for area codes so only the person who entered the
number can know how to split it. Do not delete the whitespace and then
reformat the numbers assuming a fixed format because none actually exists.
Tables of international dialing codes are available just googling around
(for example, http://www.kropla.com/dialcode.htm), it is not a bad idea to
check country against the first part of the phone number but then, a warning
is all you could possibly issue since a person might have a postal address
in, say, Monaco (+377) and a French mobile (+33). I wouldn't imagine that
the Vatican has a separate mobile network from that of Rome so though they
have an international prefix different from that of Italy which they might
use for their land lines, their mobiles are probably Italian.

Also, it should be Province/County/State, and it should be optional since
some cities are autonomous (usuall federal capital cities), just don't make
it mandatory. And don't force anything on postal codes. Some countries
have letters in them and the number of characters varies. I just hate it
when they ask to enter the full 9 digit zip code.

Satyam


----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Heyes" <richardh@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "tedd" <tedd@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <php-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 11:56 PM
Subject: Re: [PHP] global address collection


In other words, in the USA we ask for name, address, city, state, zip, and phone number. What would be a global equivalent that could cover all (or most) address and phone numbers?

Full name (optionally forename/surname)
Address 1
Address 2 (optional)
Address 3 (optional)
Town/City
County/State
Postal/Zip code
Country

Full international phone number (eg. 0044 1623 123456)

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