String slugification in Python

There is a python package named python-slugify, which does a pretty good job of slugifying:

pip install python-slugify

Works like this:

from slugify import slugify

txt = "This is a test ---"
r = slugify(txt)
self.assertEquals(r, "this-is-a-test")

txt = "This -- is a ## test ---"
r = slugify(txt)
self.assertEquals(r, "this-is-a-test")

txt = 'C\'est déjà l\'été.'
r = slugify(txt)
self.assertEquals(r, "cest-deja-lete")

txt = 'Nín hǎo. Wǒ shì zhōng guó rén'
r = slugify(txt)
self.assertEquals(r, "nin-hao-wo-shi-zhong-guo-ren")

txt = 'Компьютер'
r = slugify(txt)
self.assertEquals(r, "kompiuter")

txt = 'jaja---lol-méméméoo--a'
r = slugify(txt)
self.assertEquals(r, "jaja-lol-mememeoo-a")

See More examples

This package does a bit more than what you posted (take a look at the source, it's just one file). The project is still active (got updated 2 days before I originally answered, over seven years later (last checked 2020-06-30), it still gets updated).

careful: There is a second package around, named slugify. If you have both of them, you might get a problem, as they have the same name for import. The one just named slugify didn't do all I quick-checked: "Ich heiße" became "ich-heie" (should be "ich-heisse"), so be sure to pick the right one, when using pip or easy_install.

Install unidecode form from here for unicode support

pip install unidecode

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import re
import unidecode

def slugify(text):
    text = unidecode.unidecode(text).lower()
    return re.sub(r'[\W_]+', '-', text)

text = u"My custom хелло ворлд"
print slugify(text)

>>> my-custom-khello-vorld

There is python package named awesome-slugify:

pip install awesome-slugify

Works like this:

from slugify import slugify

slugify('one kožušček')  # one-kozuscek

awesome-slugify github page

It works well in Django, so I don't see why it wouldn't be a good general purpose slugify function.

Are you having any problems with it?