Yesterday, I got this idea to mess around with phone numbers, you know, just see if I could automate pulling some info from them. I’ve heard about this thing called “phone base” but never really dug into it, So,I decided to give it a try.
First Steps: Searching and Gathering
First things first, I gotta figure out what I actually need. I start hitting up the search engines, typing in stuff like “phone base lookup,” “phone number information,” and so on. I am just browsing through a bunch of websites, forums, and some shady-looking places, to be honest.
I am looking for tools or maybe APIs. Some sites are offering “free” lookups, but they always want your email or want you to sign up, which I am not a big fan of. I am keeping an eye out for anything mentioning “bulk lookup” since that sounds like what I want in the long run.
The “Aha!” Moment (Kind Of)
After a bit of digging,I came across some Python libraries. It looked promising! At this point, it started to feel less like a total shot in the dark, and I realized I need to install this.
Getting My Hands Dirty (Coding Time)
I fire up my trusty old text editor. I am not a pro coder, but I can usually hack my way through simple scripts. I started by trying to install the library using pip install.
I cobbled together a super basic script. All it did was take a single phone number as input and then tried to print out some basic info, like maybe the carrier or the location if it could find it.
Of course, it failed the first few times. There are always some dumb errors, like forgetting a colon or messing up the indentation. Classic newbie mistakes! But I am used to it, so I just kept tweaking and fixing until I get something that at least runs without crashing.
Results (and Disappointments)
The first number I tested it on was my own, just to be safe. And… it kinda worked! It spit out some info. It’s not super detailed, but it’s something. I tried a few other numbers, some friends’ and family’s (with their permission, of course!). The results were a bit of a mixed bag.
Some numbers gave back decent info, others pretty much nothing. I guess it depends on the carrier and how much info is publicly available. I also quickly realize that doing this one number at a time is going to be a pain. I need to figure out how to feed it a whole list of numbers. That’s for another day, though.
Next Steps (and a Bit of Reality)
So, that’s where I am at. I managed to get a basic “phone base” thing working. It’s not perfect, not even close, but it’s a start. I still need to figure out:
- How to handle a list of numbers: I don’t want to type them in one by one.
- Better data sources: The free stuff is limited. Maybe I need to look at paid APIs eventually.
- Error handling: What happens when a number is invalid or the lookup fails?
- Making it useful: Right now, it’s just a toy. I need to think about what I actually want to do with this.
I’m not sure where this little project will go, but it’s been a fun learning experience so far. Maybe I’ll turn it into something useful, or maybe it’ll just end up as another half-finished project on my hard drive. Who knows! I think i need more practice.