make title url friendly

bull

Im looking for advice, suggestions or link on my problem:

I have forms where users can submit their story. And they have to write a title in seperate field. And thing I want to do is - take this submitted title and convert it so it would be usable in url.

For example,

User submits story and gives it title - "My totally awesome story!!! Read it...."

And php script should make from it something like - my_totally_awesome_story_read_it , so I can store in db and make link to story like - www.domain.com/story.php?id=my_totally_awesome_story_read_it

As you see, here is necessary to skip symbols that cant be used in url.

What can you advise me, is there any working example available or link?

Thanks.

HalfaBee

www.php.net/urlencode might help.

Do you need to use the text as the link?
Maybe just an id number might be easier.

bull

I got impression that making links this way would be better for SEO. As it (url) will contain actual title it will be better positioned in search results.

I could be wrong, but that's what I think.

is the urlencode good enough? I've read some minuses mentioned in php.net

HalfaBee

I suppose you could use preg_replace( "/[\W]+/","_","this is isn't , text");

NogDog

HalfaBee wrote:
I suppose you could use preg_replace( "/[\W]+/","","this is isn't , text");

Just want to point out that the "\W" does not need to be in a character class, so you could shorten that a bit to:

$url = preg_replace('/\W+/', '_', $title);

bull

works fine for me, thanks.

mostly stories will be in english language and then this works, but if its in other language (any.. chinese or whatever) whats the best way to act then?

is there any way to check if submitted title is valid for convertation .. and if not then put it in moderation or dont write in db?