Question

I was wondering which is the best way to turn a string (e.g. a post title) into a descriptive URL. the simplest way that comes to mind is by using a regex, such in:

public static Regex regex = new Regex(       '\\W+',     RegexOptions.IgnoreCase     | RegexOptions.CultureInvariant     | RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace     | RegexOptions.Compiled     );  string result = regex.Replace(InputText,'_'); 

which turns

‘my first (yet not so bad) cupcake!! 🙂 .//\.’

into

my_first_yet_not_so_bad_cupcake_ 

then I can strip the last ‘_’ and check it against my db and see if it’s yet present. in that case I would add a trailing number to make it unique and recheck.

I could use it in, say

http://myblogsite.xom/posts/my_first_yet_not_so_bad_cupcake 

but, is this way safe? should i check other things (like the length of the string) is there any other, better method you prefer? thanks

Answer 1

Here’s what I do. regStripNonAlpha removes all the non-alpha or ‘-‘ characters. Trim() removes trailing and leading spaces (so we don’t end up with dashes on either side). regSpaceToDash converts spaces (or runs of spaces) into a single dash. This has worked well for me.

static Regex regStripNonAlpha = new Regex(@'[^\w\s\-]+', RegexOptions.Compiled); static Regex regSpaceToDash = new Regex(@'[\s]+', RegexOptions.Compiled);  public static string MakeUrlCompatible(string title) {     return regSpaceToDash.Replace(       regStripNonAlpha.Replace(title, string.Empty).Trim(), '-'); }