PHP strip string of everything but letters and spaces, then convert spaces to dashes

Question

This is what I've tried, but it didn't remove the apostrophe, is there a better way to do it?

$title = strtr($title, array('.' => '', ',' => '', '!' => '', '\''  => ''));
$title = preg_replace('/\s+/', '-', $title);

So for example I would want to turn:

Example:

Let's Start! => lets-start

But I'm trying to find a solution that works for all cases.

You want uppercase to become lower case? Why does your code have underscore, when you want a dash? — trincot, Jul 21 '17 at 21:03
first replace `[^\w\d\s]` with empty string, then replace `[\s]` with dash — Iłya Bursov, Jul 21 '17 at 21:03
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5305879/automatic-clean-and-seo-friendly-url-slugs — Oluwaseye, Jul 21 '17 at 21:08
@IlyaBursov: characters from `\d` are already in `\w`, writing `[^\w\d\s]` is redundant and same as `[^\w\s]`. — Casimir et Hippolyte, Jul 21 '17 at 23:16

trincot · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-21T21:11:04.000

4

You could use this expression:

strtolower(preg_replace("#\s+#u", "-", preg_replace("#[^\w\s]|_#u", "", $title)))

Note: if your original string contains HTML encoding, like ’, then you must first decode it with:

$title = html_entity_decode($title);

edited Jul 21 '17 at 21:11

answered Jul 21 '17 at 21:08

trincot

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That turned Let's Start! into let8217s-start – James Mitchell Jul 21 '17 at 21:09
Sounds like you're not dealing with an ASCII apostrophe there, @JamesMitchell. – bishop Jul 21 '17 at 21:10
Try with the `u` (Unicode) modifier (answer updated). Also make sure your input string is not HTML encoded. It should really be a literal quote, not `#&8217;` like in HTML encoding. – trincot Jul 21 '17 at 21:11
Hmm yeah it may be a wordpress issue with the apostrophe because that part still doesn't work. – James Mitchell Jul 21 '17 at 21:15
That's the issue I was trying to solve! Didn't realize I had to decode it. Thanks so much. – James Mitchell Jul 21 '17 at 21:18

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 21 '17 at 21:11

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$string = mb_strtolower( strtr("Let's start!", array('.' => '', ',' => '', '!' => '', '\''  => '') ) );
echo  $string = preg_replace("/[\s]/", "-", $string);

This should replace the characters, then change all spaces to dashes for you.

answered Jul 21 '17 at 21:11

Ice76

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Having an issue with the apostrophe, I think it could be a wordpress issue. It's pulling the_title variable. – James Mitchell Jul 21 '17 at 21:16
@JamesMitchell The variation would be to use `"'" => ''` instead. (Double quotes surrounding the single quote) – Ice76 Jul 21 '17 at 21:29

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 21 '17 at 21:23

0

You can get the same result without regx

Example:

$title = "Let's Start!";
$title = strtr(strtolower($title), array('.' => '', ',' => '', '!' => '', '\''  => ''));
$title = str_replace(' ','-',trim($title));

echo $title; //Output: lets-start

answered Jul 21 '17 at 21:23

Rashid

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PHP strip string of everything but letters and spaces, then convert spaces to dashes

3 Answers3

Example: