PHP function to make slug (URL string)
Solution 1:
Instead of a lengthy replace, try this one:
public static function slugify($text, string $divider = '-')
{
// replace non letter or digits by divider
$text = preg_replace('~[^\pL\d]+~u', $divider, $text);
// transliterate
$text = iconv('utf-8', 'us-ascii//TRANSLIT', $text);
// remove unwanted characters
$text = preg_replace('~[^-\w]+~', '', $text);
// trim
$text = trim($text, $divider);
// remove duplicate divider
$text = preg_replace('~-+~', $divider, $text);
// lowercase
$text = strtolower($text);
if (empty($text)) {
return 'n-a';
}
return $text;
}
This was based off the one in Symfony's Jobeet tutorial.
Solution 2:
Update
Since this answer is getting some attention, I'm adding some explanation.
The solution provided will essentially replace everything except A-Z, a-z, 0-9, & - (hyphen) with - (hyphen). So, it won't work properly with other unicode characters (which are valid characters for a URL slug/string). A common scenario is when the input string contains non-English characters.
Only use this solution if you're confident that the input string won't have unicode characters which you might want to be a part of output/slug.
Eg. "नारी शक्ति" will become "----------" (all hyphens) instead of "नारी-शक्ति" (valid URL slug).
Original Answer
How about...
$slug = strtolower(trim(preg_replace('/[^A-Za-z0-9-]+/', '-', $string)));
?
Solution 3:
If you have intl extension installed, you can use Transliterator::transliterate function to create a slug easily.
<?php
$string = 'Namnet på bildtävlingen';
$slug = \Transliterator::createFromRules(
':: Any-Latin;'
. ':: NFD;'
. ':: [:Nonspacing Mark:] Remove;'
. ':: NFC;'
. ':: [:Punctuation:] Remove;'
. ':: Lower();'
. '[:Separator:] > \'-\''
)
->transliterate( $string );
echo $slug; // namnet-pa-bildtavlingen
?>
Solution 4:
Note: I have taken this from wordpress and it works!!
Use it like this:
echo sanitize('testing this link');
Code
//taken from wordpress
function utf8_uri_encode( $utf8_string, $length = 0 ) {
$unicode = '';
$values = array();
$num_octets = 1;
$unicode_length = 0;
$string_length = strlen( $utf8_string );
for ($i = 0; $i < $string_length; $i++ ) {
$value = ord( $utf8_string[ $i ] );
if ( $value < 128 ) {
if ( $length && ( $unicode_length >= $length ) )
break;
$unicode .= chr($value);
$unicode_length++;
} else {
if ( count( $values ) == 0 ) $num_octets = ( $value < 224 ) ? 2 : 3;
$values[] = $value;
if ( $length && ( $unicode_length + ($num_octets * 3) ) > $length )
break;
if ( count( $values ) == $num_octets ) {
if ($num_octets == 3) {
$unicode .= '%' . dechex($values[0]) . '%' . dechex($values[1]) . '%' . dechex($values[2]);
$unicode_length += 9;
} else {
$unicode .= '%' . dechex($values[0]) . '%' . dechex($values[1]);
$unicode_length += 6;
}
$values = array();
$num_octets = 1;
}
}
}
return $unicode;
}
//taken from wordpress
function seems_utf8($str) {
$length = strlen($str);
for ($i=0; $i < $length; $i++) {
$c = ord($str[$i]);
if ($c < 0x80) $n = 0; # 0bbbbbbb
elseif (($c & 0xE0) == 0xC0) $n=1; # 110bbbbb
elseif (($c & 0xF0) == 0xE0) $n=2; # 1110bbbb
elseif (($c & 0xF8) == 0xF0) $n=3; # 11110bbb
elseif (($c & 0xFC) == 0xF8) $n=4; # 111110bb
elseif (($c & 0xFE) == 0xFC) $n=5; # 1111110b
else return false; # Does not match any model
for ($j=0; $j<$n; $j++) { # n bytes matching 10bbbbbb follow ?
if ((++$i == $length) || ((ord($str[$i]) & 0xC0) != 0x80))
return false;
}
}
return true;
}
//function sanitize_title_with_dashes taken from wordpress
function sanitize($title) {
$title = strip_tags($title);
// Preserve escaped octets.
$title = preg_replace('|%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])|', '---$1---', $title);
// Remove percent signs that are not part of an octet.
$title = str_replace('%', '', $title);
// Restore octets.
$title = preg_replace('|---([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])---|', '%$1', $title);
if (seems_utf8($title)) {
if (function_exists('mb_strtolower')) {
$title = mb_strtolower($title, 'UTF-8');
}
$title = utf8_uri_encode($title, 200);
}
$title = strtolower($title);
$title = preg_replace('/&.+?;/', '', $title); // kill entities
$title = str_replace('.', '-', $title);
$title = preg_replace('/[^%a-z0-9 _-]/', '', $title);
$title = preg_replace('/\s+/', '-', $title);
$title = preg_replace('|-+|', '-', $title);
$title = trim($title, '-');
return $title;
}