Converting Special Characters with PHP

Question

I am trying to turn a standard wordpress title into a slug, that makes all characters lowercase, replaces spaces with dashes, and removes all "&" symbols that are in the titles.

So lets use this title as an example: "Identity & Wayfinding"

Here is my PHP:

<?php 
$title = get_the_title(); 
$lower = strtolower($title);
$noDash = str_replace(' ', '-', $lower);
$noAnd = str_replace('&', '', $noDash);
echo $noAnd;
?>

This turns my title into "identity-#038;-wayfinding"

The lowercase conversion worked, but the replacing of the"&" with nothing isnot working . It is converting the "&" into an HTML special character. Any idea how I can simply replace the "&" with a blank, but also REMOVE the dash after that so the final title would be: "identity-wayfinding"?

What's wrong with using [htmlentities](http://php.net/manual/en/function.htmlentities.php)? — PenguinCoder, Jul 10 '12 at 17:07
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4983989/convert-ascii-to-utf-8-encoding — Ali Ben Messaoud, Jul 10 '12 at 17:08

Lusitanian · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-10T17:22:03.100

3

If you want a slug, there are plenty of utilities which will do it for you, but neither htmlentities or urlencode is correct. Doctrine 1.2 included a urlizer class with a set of static functions including urilize which will accomplish the behavior you desire in a more robust manner (handles UTF-8 and unaccenting correctly, etc.)

It can be found here

If you want something less robust but far simpler:

function slugify($sluggable)
{
    $sluggable = preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9\/_|+ -]/", '', $sluggable);
    $sluggable = trim($sluggable, '-');
    if( function_exists('mb_strtolower') ) { 
        $sluggable = mb_strtolower( $sluggable );
    } else { 
        $sluggable = strtolower( $sluggable );
    }
    $sluggable = preg_replace("/[\/_|+ -]+/", '-', $sluggable);

    return $sluggable;
}

That'll strip non-alphanumeric characters (but also accented characters) and make spaces, + signs, and hyphens into hyphens.

edited Jul 10 '12 at 17:22

answered Jul 10 '12 at 17:12

Lusitanian

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I do not want to use urilize because it requires using this php file, which seems unnecessary for this simple change – JCHASE11 Jul 10 '12 at 17:19
I got: Fatal error: Call to undefined function mb_strtolower() – JCHASE11 Jul 10 '12 at 17:24
You don't have php_mbstring. Use strtolower in place of mb_strtolower or use the updated code in my post – Lusitanian Jul 10 '12 at 17:25
this leaves me with "interpretive-038-donor" I want the 038- gone! – JCHASE11 Jul 10 '12 at 17:27
In that case, you're running htmlentities on the title before outputting it! You need to call `$blah = html_entity_decode($title);` before running the function i gave you. – Lusitanian Jul 10 '12 at 17:28
As htmlentities() is the wrong function. html_entity_decode is the inverse operation. – Lusitanian Jul 10 '12 at 17:38
wait, nvm. (15 chars comment). – Jul 10 '12 at 17:40

score 0 · Answer 2 · 2012-07-10T17:24:03.683

0

Use the str_replace by first removing the " "(space), then "-" and then replacing the & with dash.

$title = "Identity & Wayfinding";
$title = strtolower(str_replace(array(" ","-","&"),array("","","-"),$title));

echo $title; // returns: identity-wayfinding

Example@viper7.

edited Jul 10 '12 at 17:24

answered Jul 10 '12 at 17:09

1

He doesn't want either of those functions...he wants a slug. – Lusitanian Jul 10 '12 at 17:13
Indeed. He doesn't want `#038;`, he wants that character stripped. – Lusitanian Jul 10 '12 at 17:15
htmlentitie does not remove the special chars – JCHASE11 Jul 10 '12 at 17:21
#Omeid - this doesnt get rid of the "#038;" – JCHASE11 Jul 10 '12 at 17:25
still the same problem with your code, but answer above works great! – JCHASE11 Jul 10 '12 at 17:39
I am not sure what your problem is, did you check the Example ? the output is plain text. what "#038" are you talking about ? – Jul 10 '12 at 17:42
it seems to be working fine in your example, but when I use it I still see the problem. Thanks for your help +1, but above solution works better for me – JCHASE11 Jul 10 '12 at 17:46

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:20

0

You are probably talking about slugs, see these:

Slug URL generation function overriding the Ç
best way to escape and create a slug (and the article linked in it)
or any of the previously linked answers SEO Friendly links, js and/or php stripping here

edited May 23 '17 at 12:20

Community

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answered Jul 10 '12 at 17:22

complex857

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DavChana · Answer 4 · 2012-07-10T17:36:42.753

Use this code:

 <?php
function create_slug($string){
$slug=preg_replace('/[^A-Za-z0-9-]+/', '-', $string);
$slug=ltrim($slug, "-");
$slug=rtrim($slug, "-");
return strtolower($slug);
}
echo create_slug('does this thing work or not');
//returns 'does-this-thing-work-or-not'

echo "<br />";
echo create_slug('"Identity & Wayfinding"');
?>

Live Example

Of course if you want to use this function in Wordpress, you just need to use this:

<?php sanitize_title( $title, $fallback_title ) ?>

Where, $title is the input string & $fallback_title is the default value, if $title comes out empty. Read more here: Wordpress Function Reference/Sanitize Title

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 10 '12 at 17:25

Here's the function I use.

function text_as_url($str='', $separator = 'dash', $lowercase = false){
    if ($separator == 'dash'){
        $search     = '_';
        $replace    = '-';
    } else {
        $search     = '-';
        $replace    = '_';
    }

    $trans = array(
                    '\/'                    => '-',
                    '&\#\d+?;'              => '-',
                    '&\S+?;'                => '-',
                    '\s+'                   => $replace,
                    '[^a-z0-9\-\._]'        => '', // accents
                    $replace.'+'            => $replace,
                    $replace.'$'            => $replace,
                    '^'.$replace            => $replace,
                    '\.+$'                  => '-'
                );

    $str = strip_tags($str);

    foreach ($trans as $key => $val){
        $str = preg_replace("#".$key."#i", $val, $str);
    }

    if($lowercase === true){
        $str = strtolower($str);
    }

    return trim(stripslashes($str));
}

Converting Special Characters with PHP

5 Answers5