Searching for Records

Question

I've come up with a simple search view to search for records in my app. The user just enters all parameters in the search box then all this is matched against the database, then results are returned. One of these fields is the phone number....now in the database it's stored in the format XXX-XXX-XXX. A search, for example, for "765-4321" pull up only "416-765-4321...however I want it to return both "416-765-4321" and "4167654321"

My view is as below:

def search(request, page_by=None):    
   query = request.GET.get('q', '')
   if query:
      term_list = query.split(' ')
      q = Q(first_name__icontains=term_list[0]) | 
          Q(last_name__icontains=term_list[0]) | 
          Q(email_address__icontains=term_list[0]) | 
          Q(phone_number__icontains=term_list[0])
      for term in term_list[1:]:
          q.add((Q(first_name__icontains=term) | 
                 Q(last_name__icontains=term) | 
                 Q(email_address__icontains=term) | 
                 Q(phone_number__icontains=term)), q.connector)
      results = Customer.objects.filter(q).distinct()
      all = results.count()
  else:
    results = []

  if 'page_by' in request.GET:
    page_by = int(request.REQUEST['page_by'])
  else:
    page_by = 50

  return render_to_response('customers/customers-all.html', 
                             locals(), context_instance=RequestContext(request))

Answer 1

One option is to save stripped-down number in separate field and search by it