Question

I see web sites that takes any string and replaces all non-alpha numeric characters with a single –

How can I do this?

Answer 1

I use a function like this for czech language:

function Slugify($string) {
  $withdiacritic = array_merge(str_split("říšěžťčýůňúěďáéó", 2), array(" ", "/"));
  $woutdiacritic = array_merge(str_split("riseztcyunuedaeo", 1), array("-", "-"));

  $string = mb_strtolower($string);
  $string = str_replace($withdiacritic, $woutdiacritic, ($string));
  $string = preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z0-9-]/', '-', $string);

  return $string;
}

The added value is that it’s more readable than converting all non-standard chars to -.

EDIT

You might also want to add a line like

$string = preg_replace('~-{2,}~', '-', $string);

to get rid of long - sequences.