Seperate phone numbers from string in cell - random order - sql

Question

I have a bunch of data that contains a phone number and a birthday as well as other data.
{1997-06-28,07742367858}
{07791100873,1996-07-14}
{30/01/1997,07974335488}
{1997-04-04,07701003703}
{1996-03-11,07480227283}
{1998-06-20,07713817233}
{1996-09-13,07435148920}
{"21 03 2000",07548542539,1st}
{1996-03-09,07539248008}
{07484642432,1996-03-01}
I am trying to extract the phone number from this, however unsure on how to get this out when the data is not always in the same order.
I would expect to one column that return a phone number, the next which returned a birthday then another which return any arbitrary value in the 3rd column slot.

Answer 1

You can try to sort parts of each string by the number of digits they contain. This can be done with the expression:
select length(regexp_replace('1997-06-28', '\D', '', 'g'))
length
--------
8
(1 row)
The query removes curly brackets from strings, splits them by comma, sorts elements by the number of digits and aggregates back to arrays:
with my_data(str) as (
values
('{1997-06-28,07742367858}'),
('{07791100873,1996-07-14}'),
('{30/01/1997,07974335488}'),
('{1997-04-04,07701003703}'),
('{1996-03-11,07480227283}'),
('{1998-06-20,07713817233}'),
('{1996-09-13,07435148920}'),
('{"21 03 2000",07548542539,1st}'),
('{1996-03-09,07539248008}'),
('{07484642432,1996-03-01}')
)
select id, array_agg(elem order by length(regexp_replace(elem, '\D', '', 'g')) desc)
from (
select id, trim(unnest(string_to_array(str, ',')), '"') as elem
from (
select trim(str, '{}') as str, row_number() over () as id
from my_data
) s
) s
group by id
Result:
id | array_agg
----+--------------------------------
1 | {07742367858,1997-06-28}
2 | {07791100873,1996-07-14}
3 | {07974335488,30/01/1997}
4 | {07701003703,1997-04-04}
5 | {07480227283,1996-03-11}
6 | {07713817233,1998-06-20}
7 | {07435148920,1996-09-13}
8 | {07548542539,"21 03 2000",1st}
9 | {07539248008,1996-03-09}
10 | {07484642432,1996-03-01}
(10 rows)
See also this answer Looking for solution to swap position of date format DMY to YMD if you want to normalize dates. You should modify the function:
create or replace function iso_date(text)
returns date language sql immutable as $$
select case
when $1 like '__/__/____' then to_date($1, 'DD/MM/YYYY')
when $1 like '____/__/__' then to_date($1, 'YYYY/MM/DD')
when $1 like '____-__-__' then to_date($1, 'YYYY-MM-DD')
when trim($1, '"') like '__ __ ____' then to_date(trim($1, '"'), 'DD MM YYYY')
end
$$;
and use it:
select id, a[1] as phone, iso_date(a[2]) as birthday, a[3] as comment
from (
select id, array_agg(elem order by length(regexp_replace(elem, '\D', '', 'g')) desc) as a
from (
select id, trim(unnest(string_to_array(str, ',')), '"') as elem
from (
select trim(str, '{}') as str, row_number() over () as id
from my_data
) s
) s
group by id
) s
id | phone | birthday | comment
----+-------------+------------+---------
1 | 07742367858 | 1997-06-28 |
2 | 07791100873 | 1996-07-14 |
3 | 07974335488 | 1997-01-30 |
4 | 07701003703 | 1997-04-04 |
5 | 07480227283 | 1996-03-11 |
6 | 07713817233 | 1998-06-20 |
7 | 07435148920 | 1996-09-13 |
8 | 07548542539 | 2000-03-21 | 1st
9 | 07539248008 | 1996-03-09 |
10 | 07484642432 | 1996-03-01 |
(10 rows)