when adding a title that stores in database, create slug automatically - php

Question

I have a basic insert record that inserts the data captured by a user into the database. It is a very simple form with a title, article and date. I want to create a slug entry as well though. So, if I type: this is a news title then I want it store that in the title column but also store, this-is-a-news-title in the slug column.
I'm using this which does work for creating the hyphens:
function create_url_slug($string){
$slug=preg_replace('/[^A-Za-z0-9-]+/', '-', $string);
return $slug;
}
And I have an insert like this:
$hostname_slugs = "localhost";
$database_slugs = "slugs";
$username_slugs = "root";
$password_slugs = "root";
try{
$conn = new PDO('mysql:host=$hostname_slugs;dbname=$database_slugs', '$username_slugs', '$password_slugs');
$slug = create_url_slug($_POST['newsarticle']);
//we'll use a prepared statement, which will sanitize our strings for us!
$stmt = $conn->prepare('INSERT INTO news (articledate, newsheadline, headlineslug, newsarticle) VALUES (:articledate, :newsheadline, :headlineslug, :newsarticle)');
$stmt->bindParam(':articledate', $_POST['articledate']);
$stmt->bindParam(':newsheadline', $_POST['newsheadline']);
$stmt->bindParam(':headlineslug', $_POST['headlineslug']);
$stmt->bindParam(':newsarticle', $slug);
$stmt->execute();
echo 'Successfully saved article!';
} catch(PDOException $e){
echo "There was an error: ".$e->getMessage();
exit();
}
But I am not sure how to achieve what I want.

Answer 1

Looks like you have the headline slug, which is what you want anyway. right? So let's just wrap that in our function create_url_slug()
create_url_slug(GetSQLValueString($_POST['headlineslug'], "text"))
Should be all you need.
Let's do it using PDO as the gentlemen above suggested!
try{
$conn = new PDO('mysql:host=host;dbname=yourdatabasename', 'user', 'pass');
$slug = create_url_slug($_POST['newsarticle']);
//we'll use a prepared statement, which will sanitize our strings for us!
$stmt = $conn->prepare('INSERT INTO news (articledate, newsheadline, headlineslug, newsarticle) VALUES (:articledate, :newsheadline, :headlineslug, :newsarticle)');
$stmt->bindParam(':articledate', $_POST['articledate']);
$stmt->bindParam(':newsheadline', $_POST['newsheadline']);
$stmt->bindParam(':headlineslug', $_POST['headlineslug']);
$stmt->bindParam(':newsarticle', $slug);
$stmt->execute();
echo 'Successfully saved article!';
} catch(PDOException $e){
echo "There was an error: ".$e->getMessage();
exit();
}
Resources
PDO connection
PDO Prepared Statements