Populate Whatsapp Link Based on Seller Phone Number WCFM

Hi all,

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Today I'm going to share, how to populate WhatsApp link based on the seller number.

My example today is based on Malaysia's phone number.

The registration input doesn't have an input validator for the phone number, however, these are the most common number registered by users.

1) starting with 6 at front
2) starting with +6 at front
3) normal number without country code eg : 014xxxxxx

Full code on how to populate whatsapp link for seller number

	$malaysia_phone_patterns = "#(^[6]\w*$)|(^[+][6]\w*$)#";
	$number = get_usermeta($post_author_id,'billing_phone');
	preg_match($malaysia_phone_patterns, $number, $matches);
	if ($matches) {
	// full pattern of all.
	//means one of the pattern is captured
	if ($matches[0]) {
	//do nothing.
	}
	// first pattern matches with 6 at start
	if($matches[1]) {
	//do nothing
	}
	if (count($matches)>2) {
	// second pattern matches with +6 at start
	if($matches[2]) {
	//remove the '+' character!
	$number=str_replace("+", "", $matches[2]);
	}
	}
	} else {
	//means no +6/6...so add 6 at front.
	$number = "6".$number;
	}
	$whatsapp_number_link = "https://wa.me/".$number;

view raw populate_seller_whatsapp_number.php hosted with ❤ by GitHub

basically,

I introduced a simple pattern that has 2 groups.

"#(^[6]\w*$)|(^[+][6]\w*$)#";

The patterns must have a delimeter added for PHP, in my case i use a `#`. You can use other delimiter that supported by PHP.

The first pattern

(^[6]\w*$)

Checks whether the seller phone number starts with number 6 and followed with other characters. If it is matched, do nothing as the format is already correct.

The second pattern

(^[+][6]\w*$)

Checks whether the seller phone number starts with a character '+' and followed by 6 and other characters. If it is matched, replace the '+' with empty string. As Whatsapp API does'nt accept '+' character.

If the number does not match these two patterns, we will append 6 in front of the number.

else { $number = "6".$number; }

Why? because that is the number format understand by WhatsApp API~

Hit me some comments if you encountered any issues. I will try to help out!