Regular Expression Sanitize (PHP)

Question

Hello,

I would like to sanitize a string in to a URL so this is what I basically need.

1. Everything must be removed except alphanumeric characters and spaces and dashed.
2. Spaces should be converter into dashes.

Eg.

This, is the URL!

must return

this-is-the-url

Thanks

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

First strip unwanted characters

$new_string = preg_replace(“/[^a-zA-Z0-9\s]/”, “”, $string);

Then changes spaces for unserscores

$url = preg_replace('/\s/', '-', $new_string);

Finally encode it ready for use

$new_url = urlencode($url);