Javascript Clean URL Regex

Question

I am building a CMS news sections with a few fields but the ones notably needed for this question are the "Title" and "URL Reference" fields. When a user enters in an article title I want Javascript/jQuery to replace the text from the Title field and create a "clean" URL fragment by removing any spaces and weird characters with a dash(-).

e.g.

Kris' FUN new Article (Title)

kris-fun-new-article (URL Reference)

Here is the code, but I can't seem to figure out how to replace multiple spaces and special characters

$('#title').keyup(function(){
    var ref = $(this).val().toLowerCase().replace('\ ','-');
    $('#reference').val(ref);
});

Also, like in the title "Kris' FUN new Article" the regex should replace "Kris' "(quote and space) with "kris-"(one dash). Essentially recognize if there are two special characters beside one another and replace is with one dash. NOT like this "kris--fun-new-article".

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I think you want a character class that contains the special characters and the space then you can specify one or more instances of the character class like so:

[specials charaters " "]+

and replace that match with a dash

Answer 2

You need the global flag - g - on the regex, and some kind of quantifier for multiples (+ = one or more matches, seems right here).

So something like replace(/[' {insert further chars you care about here}]+/g,'-')

Answer 3

Try:

function slug(str) {
  if (!arguments.callee.re) {
    // store these around so we can reuse em.
    arguments.callee.re = [/[^a-z0-9]+/ig, /^-+|-+$/g];
    // the first RE matches any sequence of characters not a-z or 0-9, 1 or more 
    // characters, and gets replaced with a '-'  the other pattern matches '-'
    // at the beginning or end of a string and gets replaced with ''
  }
  return str.toLowerCase()
   // replace all non alphanum (1 or more at a time) with '-' 
   .replace(arguments.callee.re[0], '-')
   // replace any starting or trailing dashes with ''
   .replace(arguments.callee.re[1],'');
}

slug("Kris' FUN new Article ");
// "kris-fun-new-article"

Answer 4

How's this?

str = str.toLowerCase().replace(/[^a-z0-9]+/, '-');

Should replace everything that's not a letter or a number with a dash, and the + means it'll take more than one of them at a time.

Answer 5

Samir Talwar's answer is correct, except that there needs to be a flag /.../g on the end of the regular expression to indicate a global match. Without the /.../g only the first match is replaced.

Torez, here is the updated version of your function:

$('#title').keyup(function(){
    var ref = $(this).val().toLowerCase().replace(/[^a-z0-9]+/g,'-');
    $('#reference').val(ref);
});

(Sorry, Samir, I would have just commented on your response, except I do not have enough reputation points yet.)