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.

Answer 1

Try this:

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