Slugger

slugger is a fast PHP library to generate slugs, which allows to safely include any string as part of an URL. Slugs are commonly used for CMS, blogs and other content-related platforms.

Installation

The easiest way to install slugger is to add this library as a dependency of your project using Composer:

$ cd your-project/
$ composer require easybook/slugger 1.*

If you prefer, add the new dependency by hand to your composer.json file and then, execute the composer update command to update your dependencies:

{
    "name"        : "...",
    "description" : "...",
    "require": {
        "php"              : ">=5.3.3",
        "easybook/slugger" : "1.0.*"
    }
}

Generating slugs

Most slugger libraries include a lot of settings to configure how the slugs are generated. slugger uses a different approach to offer both a great performance and enough flexibility: it includes four different slugger classes!

• Slugger, fast slugs suited for most European languages.
• Utf8Slugger, UTF-8-compliant slugger suitable for any alphabet (including japanese, arabic and hebrew languages). It requires PHP 5.4.0 or higher.
• SeoSlugger, advanced slugger that augments the strings before turning them into slugs. For instance, the string The product #3 costs $9.99 is turned into the-product-number-3-costs-9-dollars-99-cents.
• SeoUtf8Slugger, combines the Utf8Slugger and the SeoSlugger to augment and slugify any UTF-8 string.

All sluggers implement the SluggerInterface interface, which allows you to safely switch in your projects from one slugger to another.

Generating basic slugs

The easiest way to generate slugs is to use the slugify() method of the Slugger class:

use Easybook\Slugger;

$slugger = new Slugger();
$slug = $slugger->slugify('Lorem Ipsum'); // slug = lorem-ipsum

If you use PHP 5.5.0 or higher, you can generate slugs with a single line of code:

$slugger = (new \Easybook\Slugger())->slugify('Lorem Ipsum');

Generating unique slugs

If you need to ensure the uniqueness of the slugs generated during the execution of your application, use the uniqueSlugify(), which appends a random suffix to the slug:

use Easybook\Slugger;

$slugger = new Slugger();
$slug = $slugger->uniqueSlugify('Lorem Ipsum'); // slug = lorem-ipsum-a2b342f

Keep in mind that the generation of the unique slugs is non-deterministic, meaning that the appended suffix is random and it will change in each application execution, even when using the same input string.

If you want to append an autoincremental numeric suffix to the slugs, you'll need to develop your own custom solution.

Generating slugs for complex languages

If the strings contain characters belonging to complex languages such as Arabic, Hebrew and Japanese, you should use the Utf8Slugger class. This slugger requires PHP 5.4.0 or higher because it uses the built-in PHP transliterator:

use Easybook\Utf8Slugger;

$slugger = new Utf8lugger();
$slug = $slugger->slugify('日一国会'); // slug = ri-yi-guo-hui
$slug = $slugger->slugify('ضطظع');    // slug = fqklmnhwyy
$slug = $slugger->slugify('נסעףפ');   // slug = wwwyyy

Utf8Slugger also defines the uniqueSlugify() to generate unique slugs.

Generating SEO slugs

The SeoSlugger (and the related SeoUtf8Slugger) augments the strings before turning them into slugs. The conversions are related to numbers, currencies, email addresses and other common symbols:

use Easybook\SeoSlugger;

$slugger = new SeoSlugger();

$slug = $slugger->slugify('The price is $5.99');
// slug = the-price-is-5-dollars-99-cents

$slug = $slugger->slugify('Use [email protected] to get a 10% discount');
// slug = use-lorem-at-ipsum-dot-com-to-get-a-10-percent-discount

$slug = $slugger->slugify('Gravity = 9.81 m/s2');
// slug = gravity-equals-9-dot-81-m-s2

SeoSlugger and SeoUtf8Slugger also define the uniqueSlugify() to generate unique slugs.

Configuration options

The only configuration option defined by slugger is the separator character (or string) used to separate each of the slug parts. First, you can set this parameter globally using the class constructor:

use Easybook\Slugger;

$slugger = new Slugger();
$slug = $slugger->slugify('Lorem Ipsum'); // slug = lorem-ipsum

$slugger = new Slugger('_');
$slug = $slugger->slugify('Lorem Ipsum'); // slug = lorem_ipsum

$slugger = new Slugger('');
$slug = $slugger->slugify('Lorem Ipsum'); // slug = loremipsum

You can also set this parameter as the second optional argument of the slugify() and uniqueSlugify() methods. This parameter always overrides any global parameter set by the class:

use Easybook\Slugger;

$slugger = new Slugger();
$slug = $slugger->slugify('Lorem Ipsum', '_'); // slug = lorem_ipsum
$slug = $slugger->slugify('Lorem Ipsum', '');  // slug = loremipsum

$slugger = new Slugger('+');
$slug = $slugger->slugify('Lorem Ipsum', '_'); // slug = lorem_ipsum

License

slugger library is licensed under the MIT license.

Tests

The library is fully unit tested. If you have PHPUnit installed, execute phpunit command to run the complete test suite:

$ cd slugger/
$ phpunit
PHPUnit 3.7.32 by Sebastian Bergmann.

Configuration read from slugger/phpunit.xml.dist

.........................................................  63 / 103 ( 61%)
........................................

Time: 2.12 seconds, Memory: 2.00Mb

OK (103 tests, 499 assertions)

Code Quality Assurance

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