Function with special characters - php

Question

I am creating a site where the authenticated user can write messages for the index site.
On the message create site I have a textbox where the user can give the title of the message, and a textbox where he can write the message.
The message will be exported to a .txt file and from the title I'm creating the title of the .txt file and like this:
Title: This is a message (The filename will be: thisisamessage.txt)
The original given text as filename will be stored in a database rekord among with the .txt filename as path.
For converting the title text I am using a function that looks like this:
function filenameconverter($title){
$filename=str_replace(" ","",$title);
$filename=str_replace("ű","u",$filename);
$filename=str_replace("á","a",$filename);
$filename=str_replace("ú","u",$filename);
$filename=str_replace("ö","o",$filename);
$filename=str_replace("ő","o",$filename);
$filename=str_replace("ó","o",$filename);
$filename=str_replace("é","e",$filename);
$filename=str_replace("ü","u",$filename);
$filename=str_replace("í","i",$filename);
$filename=str_replace("Ű","U",$filename);
$filename=str_replace("Á","A",$filename);
$filename=str_replace("Ú","U",$filename);
$filename=str_replace("Ö","O",$filename);
$filename=str_replace("Ő","O",$filename);
$filename=str_replace("Ó","O",$filename);
$filename=str_replace("É","E",$filename);
$filename=str_replace("Ü","U",$filename);
$filename=str_replace("Í","I",$filename);
return $filename;
}
However it works fine at the most of the time, but sometimes it is not doing its work.
For example: "Pamutkéztörlő adagoló és higiéniai kéztörlő adagoló".
It should stand as a .txt as:
pamutkeztorloadagoloeshigieniaikeztorloadagolo.txt, and most of the times it is.
But sometimes when im giving this it will be:
pamutkă©ztă¶rlĺ‘adagolăłă©shigiă©niaikă©ztă¶rlĺ‘adagolăł.txt
I'm hungarian so the title text will be also hungarian, thats why i have to change the characters.
I'm using XAMPP with apache and phpmyadmin.

Answer 1

I would rather use a generated unique ID for each file as its filename and save the real name in a separate column.
This way you can avoid that someone overwrites files by simply uploading them several times. But if that is what you want you will find several approaches on cleaning filenames here on SO and one very good that I used is http://cubiq.org/the-perfect-php-clean-url-generator

Answer 2

intl
I don't think it is advisable to use str_replace manually for this purpose. You can use the bundled intl extension available as of PHP 5.3.0. Make sure the extension is turned on in your XAMPP settings.
Then, use the transliterator_transliterate() function to transform the string. You can also convert them to lowercase along. Credit goes to simonsimcity.
<?php
$input = 'Pamutkéztörlő adagoló és higiéniai kéztörlő adagoló';
$output = transliterator_transliterate('Any-Latin; Latin-ASCII; lower()', $input);
print(str_replace(' ', '', $output)); //pamutkeztorloadagoloeshigieniaikeztorloadagolo
?>
P.S. Unfortunately, the php manual on this function doesn't elaborate the available transliterator strings, but you can take a look at Artefacto's answer here.
iconv
Using iconv still returns some of the diacritics that are probably not expected.
print(iconv("UTF-8","ASCII//TRANSLIT",$input)); //Pamutk'ezt"orl"o adagol'o 'es higi'eniai k'ezt"orl"o adagol'o
mb_convert_encoding
While, using encoding conversion from Hungarian ISO to ASCII or UTF-8 also gives similar problems you have mentioned.
print(mb_convert_encoding($input, "ASCII", "ISO-8859-16")); //Pamutk??zt??rl?? adagol?? ??s higi??niai k??zt??rl?? adagol??
print(mb_convert_encoding($input, "UTF-8", "ISO-8859-16")); //PamutkéztörlŠadagoló és higiéniai kéztörlŠadagoló
P.S. Similar question could also be found here and here.