Yii - Make a string usable in a URL or filename - php

Does the Yii framework contain a function that can make a string usable in a URL or filename ?
For example: Health+%26+Safety+franchises = health-safety-franchises
So something similar to: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/templates/builtins/#slugify

slugify in Django Converts to lowercase, removes non-word characters (alphanumerics and underscores) and converts spaces to hyphens. Also strips leading and trailing whitespace.
Following are the functions in PHP to carry out same tasks.
$slug = preg_replace('#[\s!:;_\?=\\\+\*/%&#]+#', '-', $str);
//this will replace all non alphanumeric char with '-'
$slug = mb_strtolower($slug);
//convert string to lowercase
$slug = trim($slug, '-');
//trim whitespaces
You need to define a function in some controller TO use it in Yii

It is still not completely clear what you are trying to achieve exactly.
If you want to use a string that contains characters that are not supported by the browser then you should look into php functions that can do this for you.
Perhaps
http://php.net/manual/en/function.urlencode.php
(there are more, depends what you need)
If you want to use your own custom encoding then specify what your trying to achieve and I might be able to help.

You can add a behaviour to a model for that - this plugin will do the hard work for you.

Have a look to this class into yii2
https://github.com/yiisoft/yii2/blob/master/framework/behaviors/SluggableBehavior.php
and see how it use this library http://www.yiiframework.com/doc-2.0/yii-helpers-inflector.html the slug method

Related

laravel. Replace %20 in url

I have simple problem, I have to replace %20 and other crap from URL. At the moment it looks like this http://exmaple/profile/about/Eddies%20Plumbing. As you can see it's profile link.
Yes I could add str_replace values before every hyperlink, but I have like 10 of them and I think it's bad practice. Maybe there is better solution? What solution would you use? Thanks.
That is not crap, that is a valid unicode representation of a space character. And it's encoded because it's one of the characters that are deemed unsafe by RFC1738:
All unsafe characters must always be encoded within a URL. For
example, the character "#" must be encoded within URLs even in
systems that do not normally deal with fragment or anchor
identifiers, so that if the URL is copied into another system that
does use them, it will not be necessary to change the URL encoding.
So in order to have pretty URLs, you should avoid using reserved and unsafe characters which need encoding to be valid as part of a URL:
Reserved characters: $ & + , / : ; = ? #
Unsafe characters: Blank/empty space and < > # % { } | \ ^ ~ [ ] `
Instead replace spaces with dashes, which serve the same purpose visually while being a safe character, for example look at the Stack Overflow URL for this question. The URL below looks just fine and readable without spaces in it:
http://exmaple/profile/about/eddies-plumbing
You can use Laravel's str_slug helper function to do the hard work for your:
str_slug('Eddies Plumbing', '-'); // returns eddies-plumbing
The str_slug does more that replace spaces with dashes, it replaces multiple spaces with a single dash and also strips all non-alphanumeric characters, so there's no reliable way to decode it.
That being said, I wouldn't use that approach in the first place. There are two main ways I generally use to identify a database entry:
1. Via an ID
The route path definition would look like this in your case:
/profiles/about/{id}/{slug?} // real path "/profiles/about/1/eddies-plumbing"
The code used to identify the user would look like this User::find($id) (the slug parameter is not needed, it's just there to make the URL more readable, that's why I used the ? to make it optional).
2. Via a slug
The route path definition would look like this in your case:
/profiles/about/{slug} // real path "/profiles/about/eddies-plumbing"
In this case I always store the slug as a column in the users table because it's a property relevant to that user. So the retrieval process is very easy User::where('slug', $slug). Of course using str_slug to generate a valid slug when saving the user to the database. I usually like this approach better because it has the added benefit of allowing the slug to be whatever you want (not really needing to be generated from the user name). This can also allow users to choose their custom URL, and can also help with search engine optimisation.
The links are urlencoded. Use urldecode($profileLink); to decode them.
I am parsing the url tha i got in this way ->
$replacingTitle = str_replace('-',' ',$title);
<a href="example.com/category/{{ str_slug($article->title) }}/" />
In your view ...
{{$comm->title}
and in controller using parsing your url as
public function showBySlug($slug) {
$title = str_replace('-',' ',$slug);
$post = Community::where('title','=',$title)->first();
return view('show')->with(array(
'post' => $post,
));
}

PHP Remove all non letters

I have several strings that look like this:
Lasklé
Jones & Jon
I am trying to send them via the foursquare API to be matched, however it is failing with these characters. Is there a way to sanitise these so they only include English letters i.e. the results would be:
Lasklé
Jones Jon
As it appears using file_get_contents requests both with the 'é' and the '&' in the URL is causing issues.
I checked how the request was sent and realised that the '&' is uneeded and is causing the issues, is it possible to remove all non Letters/Numbers from the name?
What do the strings look like before you pass them? If your string looks like 'Lasklé' then I think you are using the wrong character set when reading the string, try using UTF-8.
If the string looks correct before you pass it on you should try urlencode the string first.
you can use preg_replace() function to replace the part of string using regex
to keep only letters you can use as follow it will also remove space( add \s from expression to keep space)
preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z]/','',$string);
to keep space in the string or any character to keep you can add it in []
preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z\s]/','',$string);
Use this to escape (space and '-'). Good for making a custom URL
$string=preg_replace("/[^A-Za-z0-9\s\/\-]/", '', $string);

Slugs for SEO using PHP - Appending name to end of URL

Something I have noticed on the StackOverflow website:
If you visit the URL of a question on StackOverflow.com:
"https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10721603"
The website adds the name of the question to the end of the URL, so it turns into:
"https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10721603/grid-background-image-using-imagebrush"
This is great, I understand that this makes the URL more meaningful and is probably good as a technique for SEO.
What I wanted to Achieve after seeing this Implementation on StackOverflow
I wish to implement the same thing with my website. I am happy using a header() 301 redirect in order to achieve this, but I am attempting to come up with a tight script that will do the trick.
My Code so Far
Please see it working by clicking here
// Set the title of the page article (This could be from the database). Trimming any spaces either side
$original_name = trim(' How to get file creation & modification date/times in Python with-dash?');
// Replace any characters that are not A-Za-z0-9 or a dash with a space
$replace_strange_characters = preg_replace('/[^\da-z-]/i', " ", $original_name);
// Replace any spaces (or multiple spaces) with a single dash to make it URL friendly
$replace_spaces = preg_replace("/([ ]{1,})/", "-", $replace_strange_characters);
// Remove any trailing slashes
$removed_dashes = preg_replace("/^([\-]{0,})|([\-]{2,})|([\-]{0,})$/", "", $replace_spaces);
// Show the finished name on the screen
print_r($removed_dashes);
The Problem
I have created this code and it works fine by the looks of things, it makes the string URL friendly and readable to the human eye. However, it I would like to see if it is possible to simplify or "tightened it up" a bit... as I feel my code is probably over complicated.
It is not so much that I want it put onto one line, because I could do that by nesting the functions into one another, but I feel that there might be an overall simpler way of achieving it - I am looking for ideas.
In summary, the code achieves the following:
Removes any "strange" characters and replaces them with a space
Replaces any spaces with a dash to make it URL friendly
Returns a string without any spaces, with words separated with dashes and has no trailing spaces or dashes
String is readable (Doesn't contain percentage signs and + symbols like simply using urlencode()
Thanks for your help!
Potential Solutions
I found out whilst writing this that article, that I am looking for what is known as a URL 'slug' and they are indeed useful for SEO.
I found this library on Google code which appears to work well in the first instance.
There is also a notable question on this on SO which can be found here, which has other examples.
I tried to play with preg like you did. However it gets more and more complicated when you start looking at foreign languages.
What I ended up doing was simply trimming the title, and using urlencode
$url_slug = urlencode($title);
Also I had to add those:
$title = str_replace('/','',$title); //Apache doesn't like this character even encoded
$title = str_replace('\\','',$title); //Apache doesn't like this character even encoded
There are also 3rd party libraries such as: http://cubiq.org/the-perfect-php-clean-url-generator
Indeed, you can do that:
$original_name = ' How to get file creation & modification date/times in Python with-dash?';
$result = preg_replace('~[^a-z0-9]++~i', '-', $original_name);
$result = trim($result, '-');
To deal with other alphabets you can use this pattern instead:
~\P{Xan}++~u
or
~[^\pL\pN]++~u

Change spaces to -

I am inserting Alias field for my db called $alias
how do I code (I am using php for mysql insert)
to remove all spaces and replace space with "-" (trying to change it to "weburl format" ie removing spaces)
Thanks
Here's the method I use to santize strings for SEF urls:
$slug = trim(strtolower($value));
$slug = preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9 _-]/', '', $slug);
return preg_replace('/\s+/', '-', $slug);
Feel free to add additional allowed characters to the first regex.
Please note that this is NOT Unicode or even full ISO-8891 safe, well, it is, but it'll drop anything that isn't a-z. That is, you may need to normalize the string beforehand (i.e., replace accented characters with their closes ASCII equivalent.) There's a number of SO questions and answers dealing with this that I've seen before, but I can't find them at the moment. I'll edit them in here if I stumble upon any.
For just removing spaces, you want the str_replace method. However, when working with URLs, you might want to consider the urlencode and rawurlencode methods as well.

Regex to change spaces in images into entities

I'm having a lot of difficulty matching an image url with spaces.
I need to make this
http://site.com/site.com/files/images/img 2 (5).jpg
into a div like this:
.replace(/(http:\/\/([^\s]+\.(jpg|png|gif)))/ig, "<div style=\"background: url($1)\"></div>")
Here's the thread about that:
regex matching image url with spaces
Now I've decided to first make the spaces into entities so that the above regex will work.
But I'm really having a lot of difficulty doing so.
Something like this:
.replace(/http:\/\/(.*)\/([^\<\>?:;]*?) ([^\<\>?:;]*)(\.(jpe?g|png|gif))/ig, "http://$1/$2%20$3$4")
Replaces one space, but all the rest are still spaces.
I need to write a regex that says, make all spaces between http:// and an image extension (png|jpg|gif) into %20.
At this point, frankly not sure if it's even possible. Any help is appreciated, thanks.
Trying Paolo's escape:
.escape(/http:\/\/(.*)\/([^\<\>?:;]*?) ([^\<\>?:;]*)(\.(jpe?g|png|gif))/)
Another way I can do this is to escape serverside in PHP, and in PHP I can directly mess with the file name without having to match it in regex.
But as far as I know something like htmlentities do not apply to spaces. Any hints in this direction would be great as well.
Try the escape function:
>>> escape("test you");
test%20you
If you want to control the replacement character but don't want to use a regular expression, a simple...
$destName = str_replace(' ', '-', $sourceName);
..would probably be the more efficient solution.
Lets say you have the string variable urlWithSpaces which is set to a URL which contains spaces.
Simply go:
urlWithoutSpaces = escape(urlWithSpaces);
What about urlencode() - that may do what you want.
On the JS side you should be using encodeURI(), and escape() only as a fallback. The reason to use encodeURI() is that it uses UTF-8 for encoding, while escape() uses ISO Latin. Same problems applies for decoding.
encodeURI = encodeURI || escape;
alert(encodeURI('image name.png'));

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