regex - Find phone numbers in python script

Question

the following python script allows me to scrape email addresses from a given file using regular expressions.

How could I add to this so that I can also get phone numbers? Say, if it was either the 7 digit or 10 digit (with area code), and also account for parenthesis?

My current script can be found below:

# filename variables
filename = 'file.txt'
newfilename = 'result.txt'

# read the file
if os.path.exists(filename):
        data = open(filename,'r')
        bulkemails = data.read()
else:
        print "File not found."
        raise SystemExit

# regex = [email protected]
r = re.compile(r'(\b[\w.]+@+[\w.]+.+[\w.]\b)')
results = r.findall(bulkemails)
emails = ""
for x in results:
        emails += str(x)+"\n"

# function to write file
def writefile():
        f = open(newfilename, 'w')
        f.write(emails)
        f.close()
        print "File written."

Regex for phone numbers:

(\d{3}[-\.\s]\d{3}[-\.\s]\d{4}|\(\d{3}\)\s*\d{3}[-\.\s]\d{4}|\d{3}[-\.\s]\d{4})

Another regex for phone numbers:

(?:(?:\+?1\s*(?:[.-]\s*)?)?(?:\(\s*([2-9]1[02-9]|[2-9][02-8]1|[2-9][02-8][02-9])\s*\)|([2-9]1[02-9]|[2-9][02-8]1|[2-9][02-8][02-9]))\s*(?:[.-]\s*)?)?([2-9]1[02-9]|[2-9][02-9]1|[2-9][02-9]{2})\s*(?:[.-]\s*)?([0-9]{4})(?:\s*(?:#|x\.?|ext\.?|extension)\s*(\d+))?

Answer 1

If you are interested in learning Regex, you could take a stab at writing it yourself. It's not quite as hard as it's made out to be. Sites like RegexPal allow you to enter some test data, then write and test a Regular Expression against that data. Using RegexPal, try adding some phone numbers in the various formats you expect to find them (with brackets, area codes, etc), grab a Regex cheatsheet and see how far you can get. If nothing else, it will help in reading other peoples Expressions.

Edit: Here is a modified version of your Regex, which should also match 7 and 10-digit phone numbers that lack any hyphens, spaces or dots. I added question marks after the character classes (the []s), which makes anything within them optional. I tested it in RegexPal, but as I'm still learning Regex, I'm not sure that it's perfect. Give it a try.

(\d{3}[-\.\s]??\d{3}[-\.\s]??\d{4}|\(\d{3}\)\s*\d{3}[-\.\s]??\d{4}|\d{3}[-\.\s]??\d{4})

It matched the following values in RegexPal:

000-000-0000
000 000 0000
000.000.0000

[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone]

000-0000
000 0000
000.0000

0000000
0000000000
[phone]

Answer 2

This is the process of building a phone number scraping regex.

First, we need to match an area code (3 digits), a trunk (3 digits), and an extension (4 digits):

reg = re.compile("\d{3}\d{3}\d{4}")

Now, we want to capture the matched phone number, so we add parenthesis around the parts that we're interested in capturing (all of it):

reg = re.compile("(\d{3}\d{3}\d{4})")

The area code, trunk, and extension might be separated by up to 3 characters that are not digits (such as the case when spaces are used along with the hyphen/dot delimiter):

reg = re.compile("(\d{3}\D{0,3}\d{3}\D{0,3}\d{4})")

Now, the phone number might actually start with a ( character (if the area code is enclosed in parentheses):

reg = re.compile("(\(?\d{3}\D{0,3}\d{3}\D{0,3}\d{4}).*?")

Now that whole phone number is likely embedded in a bunch of other text:

reg = re.compile(".*?(\(?\d{3}\D{0,3}\d{3}\D{0,3}\d{4}).*?")

Now, that other text might include newlines:

reg = re.compile(".*?(\(?\d{3}\D{0,3}\d{3}\D{0,3}\d{4}).*?", re.S)

Enjoy!

I personally stop here, but if you really want to be sure that only spaces, hyphens, and dots are used as delimiters then you could try the following (untested):

reg = re.compile(".*?(\(?\d{3})? ?[\.-]? ?\d{3} ?[\.-]? ?\d{4}).*?", re.S)

Answer 3

I think this regex is very simple for parsing phone numbers

re.findall("[(][\d]{3}[)][ ]?[\d]{3}-[\d]{4}", lines)

Answer 4

For spanish phone numbers I use this with quite success:

re.findall( r'[697]\d{1,2}.\d{2,3}.\d{2,3}.\d{0,2}',str)

Answer 5

You can check : http://regex.inginf.units.it/. With some training data and target, it constructs you an appropriate regex. It is not always perfect (check F-score). Let's try it with 15 examples :

re.findall("\w\d \w\w \w\w \w\w \w\d|(?<=[^\d][^_][^_] )[^_]\d[^ ]\d[^ ][^ ]+|(?<= [^<]\w\w \w\w[^:]\w[^_][^ ][^,][^_] )(?: *[^<]\d+)+",  
           """Lorem ipsum ©  04-42-00-00-00 dolor 1901 sit amet, consectetur [phone] adipisicing elit. 2016 Sapiente dicta fugit fugiat hic 04 42 00 00 00 aliquam itaque 04.42.00.00.00 facere, 13205 number: 100 000 000 00013 soluta. 4 Totam id dolores!""")

returns ['04 42 00 00 00', '04.42.00.00.00', '04-42-00-00-00', '50498,'] add more examples to gain precision

Answer 6

Since nobody has posted this regex yet, I will. This is what I use to find phone numbers. It matches all regular phone number formats you see in the United States. I did not need this regex to match international numbers so I didn't make adjustments to regex for that purpose.

phone_number_regex_pattern = r"\(?\d{3}\)?[-.\s]\d{3}[-.\s]\d{4}"

Use this pattern if you want simple phone numbers with no characters in between to match. An example of this would be: "4441234567".

phone_number_regex_pattern = r"\(?\d{3}\)?[-.\s]?\d{3}[-.\s]?\d{4}"

Answer 7

Below is completion of the answers above. This regex is also able to detect country code:

((?:\+\d{2}[-\.\s]??|\d{4}[-\.\s]??)?(?:\d{3}[-\.\s]??\d{3}[-\.\s]??\d{4}|\(\d{3}\)\s*\d{3}[-\.\s]??\d{4}|\d{3}[-\.\s]??\d{4}))

It can detect the samples below:

000-000-0000
000 000 0000
000.000.0000

[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone]
[phone]

000-0000
000 0000
000.0000
0000000
0000000000
[phone]

# Detect phone numbers with country code
+00 000 000 0000
+00.000.000.0000
+00-000-000-0000
+000000000000
0000 0000000000
0000-000-000-0000
00000000000000
+00 [phone]
0000 [phone]
0000(000)000-0000