PHP Function to Make Slug (Url String)

PHP function to make slug (URL string)

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.

PHP to convert string to slug

Here is a modified function that I originally found here (http://cubiq.org/the-perfect-php-clean-url-generator). you can pass '' as the delimiter to not use '-'.

public static function createSlug($str, $delimiter = '-'){

    $slug = strtolower(trim(preg_replace('/[\s-]+/', $delimiter, preg_replace('/[^A-Za-z0-9-]+/', $delimiter, preg_replace('/[&]/', 'and', preg_replace('/[\']/', '', iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $str))))), $delimiter));
    return $slug;

} 

String to SEO-friendly slug

You may use this code with preg_replace instead of str_replace to do replacements using a regex.

$s = 'I & GN Hospital and Nurses' Quarters';
echo preg_replace("/[\h&(),'-]+/", '-', preg_replace('/\h*\([^)]*\)/', '', $s));
//=> I-GN-Hospital-and-Nurses-Quarters

$p = 'Mary Kate Hunter (November 8, 1866 - April 15, 1945)';
echo preg_replace("/[\h&(),'-]+/", '-', preg_replace('/\h*\([^)]*\)/', '', $p));
//=> Mary-Kate-Hunter

Here:

• preg_replace('/\h*\([^)]*\)/', '', $s): Strips out (...) text from input
• preg_replace("/[\h&(),'-]+/", '-', $str): Replaces all chosen characters with -

Convert any title to url slug and back from url slug to title

You want to create slugs, but from experience i can tell you the decode possibilities are limited. For example "Foo - Bar" will become "foo-bar" so how do you then can possibly know that it wasn't "foo bar" or "foo-bar" all along?

Or how about chars that you don't want in your slug and also have no representation for like " ` "?
So you can ether use a 1 to 1 converstion like rawurlencode() or you can create a Slug, here is an example for a function - but as i said, no reliable decoding possible - its just in its nature since you have to throw away Information.

function sanitizeStringForUrl($string){
    $string = strtolower($string);
    $string = html_entity_decode($string);
    $string = str_replace(array('ä','ü','ö','ß'),array('ae','ue','oe','ss'),$string);
    $string = preg_replace('#[^\w\säüöß]#',null,$string);
    $string = preg_replace('#[\s]{2,}#',' ',$string);
    $string = str_replace(array(' '),array('-'),$string);
    return $string;
}

Creating a slug in the URL when using PHP String to pull data

If you're using Wordpress, take a look at add_rewrite_rule(). Along with add_rewrite_tag, this will allow you to handle that.

What you can do is define a rewrite tag for user_id, and a rewrite rule to map your pattern to the single page that handles it. You can then get the value using query_vars eg.

$wp_query->query_vars['user_id']

So this would return eg. john-doe. On your database you would have an index for the lawyer's permalink which you can then look up to find their id/record.

It's a bit confusing at first, but there is a decent example in the doc linked above.

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