Posted by Markus Ernst on 09/20/05 22:08

Hi

In order to make strings suitable for URLs in a UTF-8 encoded website, I use
2 functions, the first of which removes accents from some Latin-1, Latin-2,
and Turkish characters (suggestions for changes or additions welcome!), and
the second removes non-word characters by spaces and then urlencode()s the
string:

function remove_accents($string, $german=false) {
// Single characters
$single_fr = explode(" ", "� � � � � � A A � C C D D � � � � � E E G � �
� � I L L L � N N � � � � � � O R R S S S T T � � � � U U � Z Z Z � � � � �
� a a � c c d d � � � � e e g � � � � i l l l � n n � � � � � � � o r r s s
s t t � � � � u u � � z z z");
$single_to = explode(" ", "A A A A A A A A C C C D D D E E E E E E G I I
I I I L L L N N N O O O O O O O R R S S S T T U U U U U U Y Z Z Z a a a a a
a a a c c c d d e e e e e e g i i i i i l l l n n n o o o o o o o o r r s s
s t t u u u u u u y y z z z");
$single = array();
for ($i=0; $i<count($single_fr); $i++) {
$single[$single_fr[$i]] = $single_to[$i];
}
// Ligatures
$ligatures = array("�"=>"Ae", "�"=>"ae", "O"=>"Oe", "o"=>"oe",
"�"=>"ss");
// German umlauts
$umlauts = array("�"=>"Ae", "�"=>"ae", "�"=>"Oe", "�"=>"oe", "�"=>"Ue",
"�"=>"ue");
// Replace
$replacements= array_merge($single, $ligatures);
if ($german) $replacements= array_merge($replacements, $umlauts);
$string = strtr($string, $replacements);
return $string;
}

function make_url_string($string) {
$string = strtolower(remove_accents($string, true));
$string = preg_replace("/([\W]+)/", "-", $string);
return urlencode(trim($string, "-"));
}

I have 2 questions on this:

1. preg_replace("/([\W]+)/", "-", $string); removes all non-ASCII
characters. Is there any possibility to remove only punctuation and such
stuff, but keep all kinds of letters from whatever character sets?

2. Is there a better way to encode strings for URLs? Or is it maybe
inevitable to collect the real name and the name for the url separately to
get an ASCII-only entry?

Thanks for suggestions!

--
Markus

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