Using Slugs in Codeigniter

Using slugs in codeigniter

I just store the slugs in my database table, in a column called slug, then find a post with the slug, like this:

public function view($slug)
{
    $query = $this->db->get_where('posts', array('slug' => $slug), 1);

    // Fetch the post row, display the post view, etc...
}

Also, to easily derive a slug from your post title, just use url_title() of the URL helper:

// Use dashes to separate words;
// third param is true to change all letters to lowercase
$slug = url_title($title, 'dash', true);

A little bonus: you may wish to implement a unique key constraint to the slug column, that ensures that each post has a unique slug so it's not ambiguous which post CodeIgniter should look for. Of course, you should probably be giving your posts unique titles in the first place, but putting that in place enforces the rule and prevents your application from screwing up.

how to use slug in codeigniter

You can use one of CodeIgniters helper functions url_title()

Takes a string as input and creates a human-friendly URL string. This
is useful if, for example, you have a blog in which you'd like to use
the title of your entries in the URL.

site_url("articles/{ID}/").url_title({TITLE});

Codeigniter blog application: replace post id with slug in the singe post url only

Update in model

replace

public function get_post($id) {
   $query = $this->db->get_where('posts', array('id' => $id));

with

public function get_post($slug) {
    $query = $this->db->get_where('posts', array('slug' => $slug)); 

Update in Controller

replace

public function post($id) {

with

public function post($slug) {

and replace

$data['post'] = $this->Posts_model->get_post($id);

with

$data['post'] = $this->Posts_model->get_post($slug);

Codeigniter blog application: avoid duplicate entry error for slug

There's a lot of creative approaches you could use. It all depends on your personal preference.

The first one, with query builder enabled would be to use the built-in form_validation and check if your slug complies with is_unique and if it isn't, alter it slightly and re-check until the validation passes. Even though form_validation is used mainly to validate and sanitize user input, you can use it for pretty much anything.

Another approach would be to always make sure you're getting a unique slug on the first try by appending a nonce or a random number or some other unique parameter to the generated slug before insertion. For example:

$slug = url_title($this->input->post('title'), 'dash', TRUE).strtotime(date('Y-m-d H:i:s'));

The above, which is probably the simplest approach possible, will work as long as no two posts with exactly the same title are created at the exact same second. That would reduce the chance of collisions (almost) entirely.

A third solution, a little bit more cumbersome, would involve calculating the base slug with $slug = url_title($this->input->post('title'), 'dash', TRUE); and then:

1.- pass the slug to a simple database query (either right there in the controller or inside a model, your choice)

$this->db->select('count(*) as slugcount');
$this->db->from('your_table');
$this->db->where('slug', $slug);

$query = $this->db->get();
return $query->row(0)->slugcount;

If the slug is truly unique, you'll be returned 0, if there's one previous entry you'll be returned 1 and so on.

Afterwards you choose:
The first time you create a slug, append a "-0" or a "-1" (depending on what's best for SEO)
The second time you append a "-1" or a "-2" (depending on what you defined in the previous one)
and so on and so on

So, for example, you would alter your slug with

$slug = $slug."-".$slugcount;

would that work?

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