making an article name URL friendly

[ESeufert]

I'm working on a program that allows users to submit short articles. I'm going to mod_rewrite the URLs to make them friendly, and I need each article name to be unique so that access is simplified like this:

 

Article Name: How to Tie Your Shoe

Article URL:

www.mysite.com/articles/how_to_tie_your_shoe

 

I'll store the article name and the URL-friendly access name (how_to_tie_your_shoe) in a database.

 

Is there a function or mod out there that will do this for me? I feel like writing this would be reinventing the wheel. I just need to basically strip out special characters and replace spaces with _, but I'm wondering if I'm forgetting anything else that would prevent a URL from rendering properly.

 

The second part is making these unique: I need to check the database for pre-existing articles with the same submitted name and put together a unique identifier. I can easily append words onto the end of the article name based on some other criteria (like the article's author or when it was written), but again I have the feeling that this process has already been coded 1000 times by others. A google search, however, left me empty-handed. Any ideas?

[Jessica]

You'll likely have to write it yourself if you haven't found anything searching google. There are plenty of code repository sites out there, but I have no idea if what you want is on one.

If you don't want to write it, hire someone.

[Daniel0]

Is there a function or mod out there that will do this for me? I feel like writing this would be reinventing the wheel. I just need to basically strip out special characters and replace spaces with _, but I'm wondering if I'm forgetting anything else that would prevent a URL from rendering properly.

 

<?php
$string = "How to Tie Your Shoe";

echo strtolower(str_replace(' ','_',preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z0-9 ]/', '', $string)));
// output: how_to_tie_your_shoe
?>

[feuerfalke]

You could also use the urlencode() and urldecode() functions:

 

<?PHP

$string = "How to Tie Your Shoe";
$encoded = urlencode($string); // Outputs "How+to+Tie+Your+Shoe"
$decoded = urldecore($encoded); // Outputs "How to Tie Your Shoe"

?>