Question

I have strings with special characters I want to convert. Usually I find all the special characters and their “web safe” counter parts manually and put them in arrays. Then I use preg_replace to replace each of the characters.

But I cannot help but thinking that there is an easier solution since it is error prune approach.

Here is an example of what I want:

Hans Günther -> hans-gunther
Jären höst   -> jaeren-hoest
René Ågesen  -> rene-aagesen

Answer 1

string urlencode ( string $str )

http://php.net/manual/en/function.urlencode.php

Actually here is a great post about converting text like your example above to nice url-safe strings (probably better for you than the above function):

http://cubiq.org/the-perfect-php-clean-url-generator

setlocale(LC_ALL, 'en_US.UTF8');
function toAscii($str, $replace=array(), $delimiter='-') {
 if( !empty($replace) ) {
  $str = str_replace((array)$replace, ' ', $str);
 }

 $clean = iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $str);
 $clean = preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9\/_|+ -]/", '', $clean);
 $clean = strtolower(trim($clean, '-'));
 $clean = preg_replace("/[\/_|+ -]+/", $delimiter, $clean);

 return $clean;
}

Here are examples of what it does:

echo toAscii("Mess'd up --text-- just (to) stress /test/ ?our! `little` \\clean\\ url fun.ction!?-->");
returns: messd-up-text-just-to-stress-test-our-little-clean-url-function

echo toAscii("Perché l'erba è verde?", "'"); // Italian
returns: perche-l-erba-e-verde

echo toAscii("Peux-tu m'aider s'il te plaît?", "'"); // French
returns: peux-tu-m-aider-s-il-te-plait

echo toAscii("Tänk efter nu – förr'n vi föser dig bort"); // Swedish
returns: tank-efter-nu-forrn-vi-foser-dig-bort

echo toAscii("ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖÙÚÛÜÝßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõöùúûüýÿ");
returns: aaaaaaaeceeeeiiiidnooooouuuuyssaaaaaaaeceeeeiiiidnooooouuuuyy

echo toAscii("Custom`delimiter*example", array('*', '`'));
returns: custom-delimiter-example

echo toAscii("My+Last_Crazy|delimiter/example", '', ' ');
returns: my last crazy delimiter example

If you want to convert something like ä to ae and etc you can use a script like this (sorry, don’t know about a better way of doing this):

setlocale(LC_ALL, 'de_DE');
$replace = array(
 'illegal' => array('/Ä/', '/Ö/', '/Ü/', '/ä/', '/ö/', '/ü/', '/Â/', '/é/'),
 'legal' => array('Ae', 'Oe', 'Ue', 'ae', 'oe', 'ue', 'Aa', 'e')
 );
$string = 'ich hätte gerne brötechen Mein Name ist Öles Âlex';
echo preg_replace($replace['illegal'], $replace['legal'], $string);

//Output: "ich haette gerne broetechen Mein Name ist Oeles Aalex"

You can obviously put it all together like this (only converting ü->ue etc, just add more to the first preg_replace):

setlocale(LC_ALL, 'en_US.UTF8');
function toAscii($str, $replace=array(), $delimiter='-') {
    if( !empty($replace) ) {
        $str = str_replace((array)$replace, ' ', $str);
    }

 $clean = preg_replace(array('/Ä/', '/Ö/', '/Ü/', '/ä/', '/ö/', '/ü/'), array('Ae', 'Oe', 'Ue', 'ae', 'oe', 'ue'), $str);
    $clean = iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $clean);
    $clean = preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9\/_|+ -]/", '', $clean);
    $clean = strtolower(trim($clean, '-'));
    $clean = preg_replace("/[\/_|+ -]+/", $delimiter, $clean);

    return $clean;
}

$text = "Hätten Sie gerne viele Brötchen? Wenn ja dann einfach *!@#$%^&*()eingeben...";
echo toAscii($text);
//OUTPUT: haetten-sie-gerne-viele-broetchen-wenn-ja-dann-einfach-eingeben