Question

I am trying to sanitize a string so that it can be used to be put in an URL. This is just for show in the URL. Now I was using this function in PHP which worked fine:

$CleanString = IconV('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT//IGNORE', $String);
$CleanString = Preg_Replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9\/_|+ -]/", '', $CleanString);
$CleanString = StrToLower( Trim($CleanString, '-') );
$CleanString = Preg_Replace("/[\/_|+ -]+/", $Delimiter, $CleanString);

Now I am trying to put this in C#, the regex’s are no problem but the first line is a bit tricky. What is the safe way to replace characters as é á ó with their normal equivalents a e o?

For example, above would transer:

The cát ís running & getting away

to

the-cat-is-running-getting-away

Answer 1

The CharUnicodeInfo.GetUnicodeCategory(c) method can tell you if a character is a “Non spacing mark”. This can only be used when the string is in a form where accents (“diacritics”) are separated from their letter, which can be obtained with Normalize(NormalizationForm.FormD).

Here is the full string extension method:

using System.Text;
using System.Globalization;
...

public static string RemoveDiacritics(this string strThis)
{
    if (strThis == null)
        return null;

    var sb = new StringBuilder();

    foreach (char c in strThis.Normalize(NormalizationForm.FormD))
    {
        if (CharUnicodeInfo.GetUnicodeCategory(c) != UnicodeCategory.NonSpacingMark)
            sb.Append(c);
    }
    return sb.ToString();
}