How to create slug alias from Title using PHP & Joomla

How to create slug alias from Title using PHP & Joomla

In this article, we will learn: How to create a unique slug or alias based on Title for that specific entry, using PHP and Joomla.

Step 1: Add createSlug and generateUniqueAlias functions

We need to add slug / alias functions inside controller.

<?php
public function createSlug($title) {
	// Convert to lowercase
	$slug = strtolower($title);
	
	// Remove HTML tags
	$slug = strip_tags($slug);
	
	// Replace special characters with a space
	$slug = preg_replace('/[^\p{L}\p{Nd}]+/u', '-', $slug);
	
	// Remove multiple dashes
	$slug = preg_replace('/-+/', '-', $slug);
	
	// Trim dashes from the beginning and end
	$slug = trim($slug, '-');
	
	return $slug;
}

public function generateUniqueAlias($alias, $table, $column )
{
	$db = Factory::getDBO();
	$uniqueAlias = $alias;
	$suffix = 1;

	// Prepare the query to check for duplicates.
	$query = $db->getQuery(true)
		->select($db->quoteName($column))
		->from($db->quoteName($table))
		->where($db->quoteName($column) . ' like ' . $db->quote($uniqueAlias)).'';
// 	echo $query;

	while ($db->setQuery($query)->loadResult()) {
		$uniqueAlias = $alias . '-' . $suffix;
		$suffix++;
		$query = $db->getQuery(true)
		->select($db->quoteName($column))
		->from($db->quoteName($table))
			->where($db->quoteName($column) . ' = ' . $db->quote($uniqueAlias));
	}

	return $uniqueAlias;
}
?>

Later we will call these functions in save function using following code to get unique slug/alias:

<?php
$post['slug']=($post['slug']!="")?$post['slug']:$this->createSlug($post['txtName']);
// Example usage:
// Assuming $db is your database connection object in Joomla
$alias = $post['slug'];
$table = "#__company";
$column = "slug";
$uniqueAlias = $this->generateUniqueAlias($alias, $table, $column );
$post['slug']=$uniqueAlias;
// Output : title-1, title-2, title-3 respectively, if Title is already found, 

Hope this helped.

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 Abdul Waheed : (Hire Joomla & PHP Pakistani Freelancer)