PhoneNumber __str__ method may return non string value

[HealperDK]

In the PhoneNumber class, the string method is defined as

    def __str__(self):
        if self.is_valid():
            format_string = getattr(settings, "PHONENUMBER_DEFAULT_FORMAT", "E164")
            fmt = self.format_map[format_string]
            return self.format_as(fmt)
        else:
            return self.raw_input

Since self raw_input is a user given input it could assume other values than a string. In my case, it was "None", but I got a __str__ returned non-string (type NoneType) exception, which caused a complete crash in a place that should have only returned a form-invalid. I would argue that replacing the last line with return str(self.raw_input) would be a good fix.

[francoisfreitag]

Hi,

Can you explain how unvalidated user input gets to be formatted as an str? The client can only send an str, they won’t be able to send None. None is a Python thing.

I do agree that __str__ should return an str, however "None" is already associated to None and may cause confusion. Before to change __str__, I’m considering to disallow None as the PhoneNumber value. It makes more sense (the model field would still allow null=True, but would not cast that into a PhoneNumber instance). Disallowing None is what phonenumbers does:

from phonenumbers import parse
>>> x = parse(None)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/home/freitafr/dev/django-phonenumber-field/venv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/phonenumbers/phonenumberutil.py", line 2927, in parse
    raise NumberParseException(NumberParseException.NOT_A_NUMBER,
phonenumbers.phonenumberutil.NumberParseException: (1) The phone number supplied was None.

[francoisfreitag]

Not sure what the OP did wrong. The library behavior seems reasonable enough. Closing for inactivity.