How to Generate URL-Friendly Slugs with Hyphens Only in PHP?

URL-Friendly Slug Generation with Hyphens Only

String sanitization is essential for creating URL-friendly strings, known as slugs. These slugs facilitate easy navigation and search engine optimization. To convert a string into a slug with single-hyphen delimiters, removing all non-alphanumeric characters and spaces, consider the following approach:

1. Remove Non-Essential Characters:
Using a regular expression, we can identify all non-alphanumeric characters and spaces. These are removed to ensure a clean slug.

2. Replace Spaces with Dashes:
Spaces within the string should be replaced with hyphens (-) to create a delimiter between words. This ensures readability in the slug.

Example:

Consider the string:

This, is the URL!

Applying the above algorithm, we get the slug:

this-is-the-url

Implementation in PHP:

Here's a PHP function that implements the slug generation algorithm:

<code class="php">function slug($z){
    $z = strtolower($z);
    $z = preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9 -]+/', '', $z);
    $z = str_replace(' ', '-', $z);
    return trim($z, '-');
}</code>

Usage:

To use this function, simply provide the input string as an argument and assign the returned value to a variable.

Example Usage:

<code class="php">$input = 'This, is the URL!';
$slug = slug($input);

echo $slug; // Output: this-is-the-url</code>

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