IsValid

Checks if a telephone number is valid.

To connect to this service you'll need to use one of these endpoints:

WSDL

https://webservices.data-8.co.uk/phonevalidation.asmx

JSON

https://webservices.data-8.co.uk/PhoneValidation/IsValid.json

Description

Checks a telephone number for validity and formats it in a standard format. Details of the number's validity and other attributes are included in the result.

The telephone number can be supplied as either a full international number with leading + or 00 prefix (e.g. +441513554555) or as a national number (e.g. 01513554555), with or without additional formatting (e.g. spaces, brackets etc.). If a number is supplied as a national number, the default country code is used to identify which country the number is located in. The default country code can be supplied as any of:

international telephone dialling code (e.g. 44)
ISO 2-character code (e.g. GB)
ISO 3-character code (e.g. GBR)
ISO standard English country name (e.g United Kingdom)

If the ValidationResult member of the returned structure is Invalid, the supplied telephone number is invalid and cannot be called. If it is Valid the telephone number is likely to be valid. This does not necessarily mean that the number can be called and is owned by the expected person, but does indicate that the number lies within a range of numbers that have been allocated for use. If it is NoCoverage we cannot provide an indication to it's validity and you should normally treat it as valid.

This service is not appropriate if you require an absolute indication that a telephone number is valid for a particular individual. In those circumstances, you should consider the use of a telephone number capture service. However, this service does provide a quick method to check that a number can accept incoming calls.

Wherever possible this method will perform a live check of the telephone network. This will be performed for UK landline numbers and international mobile numbers. The ValidationLevel property in the response will be set to FullNumber if a live check was performed.

Numbers that start with 070, often referred to as personal numbers, are incredibly difficult to validate with any certainty, due to their private nature. We have created an option you can pass in to the API code, ExcludeUnlikelyNumbers, which will stop the likes of 07000000000 or 07077777777 getting through our validation. Please bear in mind that with this option, you may well exclude a small amount of genuine numbers.

Parameters

The following parameters can be supplied to this method

username	username See the available authentication methods. If you are using username & password authentication, specify the username to authenticate as. If you are using API Key authentication and you are not using the JSON, Javascript or ADO APIs, use your API Key here with the prefix `apikey-`, e.g. `apikey-ABCD-1234-EFGH-5678`
password	password If you are using username & password authentication, specify the password to use for authentication. Otherwise leave this blank.
telephoneNumber	telephoneNumber The telephone number to validate
defaultCountry	defaultCountry The ISO 2-character country code or international dialling code of the country to validate the `telephoneNumber` in, unless that number contains an explicit country code prefix.
options	options An array of options that control further details of how this method operates. See the Advanced Options section below for more information.

Advanced Options

The following options can be specified as part of the option parameter. Each option is specified as a key/value pair. The list of available names is shown below, along with a description of the allowable values for that name.

Common Options
Name	Description
ApplicationName	ApplicationName Gives the name of the calling application - used to break down usage by application in the usage reports on the dashboard
Service-Specific Options
Name	Description
RequiredCountry	RequiredCountry Indicates the country that the number must be in to be considered valid. This should be provided as the ISO 2-character country code.
AllowedPrefixes	AllowedPrefixes A comma-separated list of prefixes in standard international format that the number must start with to be treated as valid. For example, use "+441,+442" to allow only standard UK landline numbers.
BarredPrefixes	BarredPrefixes A comma-separated list of prefixes in standard international format that will cause the number to be treated as invalid. For example, use "+90,+447781" to block any Indian numbers or numbers allocated to C&W Guernsey.
TreatUnavailableMobileAsInvalid	TreatUnavailableMobileAsInvalid When validating a mobile number and the number is unavailable, this option causes the service to return `Invalid` as the `ValidationResult` instead of the default `Unavailable`. This will cause your calling application to have a stricter level of validation for mobiles, i.e. they must be turned on.
ExcludeUnlikelyNumbers	ExcludeUnlikelyNumbers If set to `true`, the service will perform an additional regex check and invalidate any unlikely numbers, such as personal cells (starting with 070).
DefaultFormatType	DefaultFormatType The format the telephone number should be returned in. This can be one of the following values: `International` - the number is presented back with full international dialling code `National` - the number is presented back without the international dialling code but with the full area code `Local` - the number is presented back with only the local part
DifferentFormatCountries	DifferentFormatCountries A comma-separated list of country codes (without leading + or 00). Any telephone numbers for these countries will be formatted using the `DifferentFormatType` format instead of the `DefaultFormatType`.
DifferentFormatType	DifferentFormatType The format the telephone number should be returned in if it is from a country listed in `DifferentFormatCountries`. This can be one of the same set of values as `DefaultFormatType`.
UseLocalFormatting	UseLocalFormatting Indicates if telephone numbers should be formatted according to the country-specific rules for its particular country. If this is set to false, numbers are formatted according to ITU international standard formatting.

Results

This method returns an object containing the following fields:

Status

Status

Indicates whether the method call was successful, or if some error occurred. If the Success field is true, the other results described below can be used to get the results of the method. If Success is false, some error occurred in calling the method, such as the authentication failed or the account is out of credits. The details of the error can be obtained from the ErrorMessage field, and any other results should be ignored

Result

Result

Contains properties indicating the validity and other information for the supplied telephone number:

Name	Description
`TelephoneNumber`	The supplied telephone number presented in an international standard format
`ValidationResult`	Indicates whether the telephone number is valid or not. The following values are available: `Valid` - the telephone number is potentially valid `Invalid` - the telephone number is invalid `NoCoverage` - we do not have telephone number validation coverage for the required country. You will not be charged for this request `Unavailable` - the telephone number is a valid mobile number but is currently unavailable - may be turned off or out of network coverage `Ambiguous` - the telephone number is a potentially valid UK landline number but we receive an ambiguous result from the telephone network when trying to validate it fully
`ValidationLevel`	Indicates the level to which we have validated the telephone number. The following values are available: `None` - the number has not been validated `STDCode` - the number has been validated to the main area code `Exchange` - the number has been validated to an individual range of numbers; this usually maps to a single telephone exchange `FullNumber` - the full telephone number has been validated live against the telephone network
`NumberType`	Indicates the type of number. The following values are available: `Unknown` - the type of telephone number could not be determined `Landline` - the number is a geographic landline number `Mobile` - the number is a mobile number `NonGeographic` - the number is a non-geographic landline number `Special` - the number is a premium rate or other similar class of special number
`Location`	The physical location associated with the number. This will be blank where a location cannot be determined, e.g. for mobile numbers
`Provider`	The name of the company providing the telephone service. This will normally not reflect the impact of number portability
`CountryCode`	The ISO 2-character code of the country the number is registered in
`CountryName`	The ISO standard name of the country the number is registered in

Live Demo

telephoneNumber

defaultCountry

options

Name	Value
Common Options
ApplicationName
Service-Specific Options
RequiredCountry
AllowedPrefixes
BarredPrefixes
TreatUnavailableMobileAsInvalid
ExcludeUnlikelyNumbers
DefaultFormatType
DifferentFormatCountries
DifferentFormatType
UseLocalFormatting

Sample Code

// NOTE: A Service Reference to the web service must be added to use this sample code.
private void IsValid(string telephoneNumber, string defaultCountry)
{
    // Declare the required options.
    Option RequiredCountry = new Option();
    RequiredCountry.Name = "RequiredCountry";
    RequiredCountry.Value = "";
    Option AllowedPrefixes = new Option();
    AllowedPrefixes.Name = "AllowedPrefixes";
    AllowedPrefixes.Value = "";
    Option BarredPrefixes = new Option();
    BarredPrefixes.Name = "BarredPrefixes";
    BarredPrefixes.Value = "";
    Option TreatUnavailableMobileAsInvalid = new Option();
    TreatUnavailableMobileAsInvalid.Name = "TreatUnavailableMobileAsInvalid";
    TreatUnavailableMobileAsInvalid.Value = "false";
    Option ExcludeUnlikelyNumbers = new Option();
    ExcludeUnlikelyNumbers.Name = "ExcludeUnlikelyNumbers";
    ExcludeUnlikelyNumbers.Value = "false";
    Option DefaultFormatType = new Option();
    DefaultFormatType.Name = "DefaultFormatType";
    DefaultFormatType.Value = "National";
    Option DifferentFormatCountries = new Option();
    DifferentFormatCountries.Name = "DifferentFormatCountries";
    DifferentFormatCountries.Value = "44";
    Option DifferentFormatType = new Option();
    DifferentFormatType.Name = "DifferentFormatType";
    DifferentFormatType.Value = "National";
    Option UseLocalFormatting = new Option();
    UseLocalFormatting.Name = "UseLocalFormatting";
    UseLocalFormatting.Value = "true";
    // Invoke the web service method.
    PhoneValidationSoapClient proxy = new PhoneValidationSoapClient();
    InternationalTelephoneValidationOutput results = proxy.IsValid("your-username", "your-password", telephoneNumber, defaultCountry, new Option[] {
                RequiredCountry,
                AllowedPrefixes,
                BarredPrefixes,
                TreatUnavailableMobileAsInvalid,
                ExcludeUnlikelyNumbers,
                DefaultFormatType,
                DifferentFormatCountries,
                DifferentFormatType,
                UseLocalFormatting});
    // Check that the call succeeded, and show the error message if there was a problem.
    if ((results.Status.Success == false))
    {
        MessageBox.Show(("Error: " + results.Status.ErrorMessage));
    }
    else
    {
        // TODO: Process method results here.
        // Results can be extracted from the following fields:
        // result.Result
    }
}

'NOTE: A Service Reference to the web service must be added to use this sample code.
Private Sub IsValid(ByVal telephoneNumber As String, ByVal defaultCountry As String)
    'Declare the required options.
    Dim RequiredCountry As [Option] = New [Option]()
    RequiredCountry.Name = "RequiredCountry"
    RequiredCountry.Value = ""
    Dim AllowedPrefixes As [Option] = New [Option]()
    AllowedPrefixes.Name = "AllowedPrefixes"
    AllowedPrefixes.Value = ""
    Dim BarredPrefixes As [Option] = New [Option]()
    BarredPrefixes.Name = "BarredPrefixes"
    BarredPrefixes.Value = ""
    Dim TreatUnavailableMobileAsInvalid As [Option] = New [Option]()
    TreatUnavailableMobileAsInvalid.Name = "TreatUnavailableMobileAsInvalid"
    TreatUnavailableMobileAsInvalid.Value = "false"
    Dim ExcludeUnlikelyNumbers As [Option] = New [Option]()
    ExcludeUnlikelyNumbers.Name = "ExcludeUnlikelyNumbers"
    ExcludeUnlikelyNumbers.Value = "false"
    Dim DefaultFormatType As [Option] = New [Option]()
    DefaultFormatType.Name = "DefaultFormatType"
    DefaultFormatType.Value = "National"
    Dim DifferentFormatCountries As [Option] = New [Option]()
    DifferentFormatCountries.Name = "DifferentFormatCountries"
    DifferentFormatCountries.Value = "44"
    Dim DifferentFormatType As [Option] = New [Option]()
    DifferentFormatType.Name = "DifferentFormatType"
    DifferentFormatType.Value = "National"
    Dim UseLocalFormatting As [Option] = New [Option]()
    UseLocalFormatting.Name = "UseLocalFormatting"
    UseLocalFormatting.Value = "true"
    'Invoke the web service method.
    Dim proxy As PhoneValidationSoapClient = New PhoneValidationSoapClient()
    Dim results As InternationalTelephoneValidationOutput = proxy.IsValid("your-username", "your-password", telephoneNumber, defaultCountry, New [Option]() {RequiredCountry, AllowedPrefixes, BarredPrefixes, TreatUnavailableMobileAsInvalid, ExcludeUnlikelyNumbers, DefaultFormatType, DifferentFormatCountries, DifferentFormatType, UseLocalFormatting})
    'Check that the call succeeded, and show the error message if there was a problem.
    If (results.Status.Success = false) Then
        MessageBox.Show(("Error: " + results.Status.ErrorMessage))
    Else
        'TODO: Process method results here.
        'Results can be extracted from the following fields:
        'result.Result
    End If
End Sub

Request Format

{
  "telephoneNumber": "0151 355 4555",
  "defaultCountry": "GB",
  "options": {
    "RequiredCountry": "",
    "AllowedPrefixes": "",
    "BarredPrefixes": "",
    "TreatUnavailableMobileAsInvalid": false,
    "ExcludeUnlikelyNumbers": false,
    "DefaultFormatType": "National",
    "DifferentFormatCountries": 44,
    "DifferentFormatType": "National",
    "UseLocalFormatting": true
  }
}

Results Format

{
  "Status": {
    "Success": true,
    "CreditsRemaining": 1000
  },
  "Result": {
    "TelephoneNumber": "+441513554555",
    "ValidationResult": "Valid",
    "ValidationLevel": "Exchange",
    "NumberType": "Landline",
    "Location": "Liverpool",
    "Provider": "BT",
    "CountryCode": "GB",
    "CountryName": "United Kingdom"
  }
}