<?php
function urify($str){
  return str_replace(" ","-",trim(ereg_replace("[^A-Za-z0-9[:space:]]", "", $str)));
}
$string = "I really hate symbol on my URL - 12345 What the !£$%^& ~!@#$%^&*()_+=-[]{}";
echo urify($string);
?>

3 Responses to “Prepare a string to use as URL in PHP”

1. ordinarywebguy says:

   March 30, 2010 at 1:23 pm

   simplier one:
   preg_replace(‘/[^A-Za-z0-9]/’, ‘-’, $str);

   [Reply]
2. Jay Ar Bauson says:

   March 30, 2010 at 4:15 pm

   Nice one, originally, it was something like that, but from our original string, the regex will return:

   I-really-hate-symbol-on-my-URL—12345-What-the—————————

   more regex I guess to strip off multiple spaces before replacing hyphen(“-”) on it.

   [Reply]
3. Joseph says:

   August 4, 2011 at 6:55 pm

   Thanks! I’m now using it for better URL’s on my website!

   [Reply]