preg_replace: trying to understand to make title as a slug for url

Question

Hi first time dealing with preg_replace and found damn complex to understand specially learner.

Trying to change title string to slug for url structure where it remove all special character like ( ) ? * and replace multiple space into single - with converting all text in to lower case.

Here is my funny code but not getting desire output.

$title_slug = $q_slug->title;
$title_slug = preg_replace("/[\s+\?]/", " ", $title_slug);        
$title_slug = str_replace("  ", " ", $title_slug);
$title_slug = str_replace(" ", "-", $title_slug);
$title_slug = preg_replace("/[^\w^\_]/"," ",$title_slug);
$title_slug = preg_replace("/\s+/", "-", $title_slug);
$title_slug = strtolower($title_slug);

return $title_slug;

EDIT: Added Example

Example: if my title is what is * the() wonder_ful not good?? and where??? Result: if-my-title-is-what-is-the-wonder_ful-not-good-and-where

Feel free to laugh :) and million thanks for help.

It is possible to do this with 2-3 lines. Can you specify what your desired output is? — Salman A, Jan 27 '13 at 18:50

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:32

3

Check out this tutorial for a clean URL generator, or even use this existing SO solution which eschews regular expressions altogether. This will probably get the job done:

function toAscii($str) {
   $clean = iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $str);
   $clean = preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9\/_| -]/", '', $clean);
   $clean = strtolower(trim($clean, '-'));
   return preg_replace("/[\/_| -]+/", '-', $clean);
}

edited May 23 '17 at 10:32

Community

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1

answered Jan 27 '13 at 18:53

hohner

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I was already on Google to search for this type of answer! iconv() is a great helper for this kind of tasks! – powtac Jan 27 '13 at 18:55
@powtac its really happy to being on stackoverflow. people are amazing and having great experience and expertise and always ready to help. – Code Lover Jan 27 '13 at 18:57
Your answer is good one only one thing, it's removing `_` which I want. However now I am really confuse which answer is the best to choose all are working fine but Salman A answer is perfect what I need – Code Lover Jan 27 '13 at 19:03

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 27 '13 at 18:51

Here's a nice function to do just that:

function toSlug ($string) {
        $string = strtolower($string);
        // Strip any unwanted characters
        $string = preg_replace("/[^a-z0-9_\s-]/", "", $string);
        // Clean multiple dashes or whitespaces
        $string = preg_replace("/[\s-]+/", " ", $string);
        // Convert whitespaces and underscore to dash
        $string = preg_replace("/[\s_]/", "-", $string);

        return $string;
}

Salman A · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-27T19:08:44.947

1

Try this:

$string = strtolower($string);
$string = preg_replace("/\W+/", "-", $string); // \W = any "non-word" character
$string = trim($string, "-");

edited Jan 27 '13 at 19:08

answered Jan 27 '13 at 18:53

Salman A

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preg_replace: trying to understand to make title as a slug for url

3 Answers3