Phone Field Formatting and Validation

Technical Help
1

Are you using our SaaS platform (Baserow.io) or self-hosting Baserow?

Self-hosted

If you are self-hosting, what version of Baserow are you running?

version 2.3.3

If you are self-hosting, which installation method do you use to run Baserow?

Docker version 29.6.2, build dfc4efb

What are the exact steps to reproduce this issue?

The phone field doesn’t format or validate as expected.

Formatting: The documentation says “It formats the string of numbers into a standardized, readable format (e.g., +1 (555) 123-4567).” No formatting seems to actually happen in practice. Whatever I enter stays exactly as I entered it. I’ve tried 5556666, 4445556666, 14445556666, and +14445556666. None display any differently than entered.

Validation: The documentation says “It automatically checks that the entered value is a plausible phone number, preventing simple data entry errors.” As far as I can tell, validation only ensures no letters and some special characters are entered. I can enter any number of digits (I tried 1 digit and 60 digits) and it’s accepted as is. When I click it, it provides a tel: link with exactly the digits entered.

I’ve tested on my local Docker instance as well as in the cloud at baserow.io. I’ve also tested in both Firefox and Chrome. I couldn’t find any reported bugs and ChatGPT is stumped too.

2

Hey @KG5000, thanks for pointing this out.

There was a mistake in our documentation. We’ve now updated it: Phone number field in Baserow table

The Phone number field currently does two things:

  • Validates that the value contains only supported characters (0-9 , + , ( , ) , - , spaces, # , * , N , and X ), with a maximum length of 100 characters.
  • Renders the value as a clickable tel: link.

It doesn’t automatically format, standardize, or verify phone numbers. Thanks again for helping us improve the docs! :raising_hands:

3

Thank you for the reply. I’m glad the docs now align with the operation of the field in practice. Any chance we might get the ability to enforce a particular format? It would be useful to specify a desired display format when creating/editing the field.

4

Let me discuss it with the team as a feature request :raising_hands: