How to generate SEO friendly URL from string using PHP

[codeguru]

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to generate SEO friendly URL from string using PHP. Our example script makes it easy to convert title string to SEO friendly URL in PHP. We’ve grouped together all the PHP code into a function named generateSeoURL(). The generateSeoURL() function automatically create clean and SEO friendly URL slug from string.

Create SEO Friendly URL in PHP​

The generateSeoURL() function automatically creates SEO friendly URL slug from the string using PHP. A title string needs to be passed as input and it returns a human-friendly URL string with a hyphen (-) as the word separator.

• $string – Required. The string which you want to convert to the SEO friendly URL.
• $wordLimit – Optional. Restrict words limit on SEO URL, default is 0 (no limit)
  
  function generateSeoURL($string, $wordLimit = 0){
  $separator = '-';
  
  if($wordLimit != 0){
  $wordArr = explode(' ', $string);
  $string = implode(' ', array_slice($wordArr, 0, $wordLimit));
  }
  
  $quoteSeparator = preg_quote($separator, '#');
  
  $trans = array(
  '&.+?;' => '',
  '[^\w\d _-]' => '',
  '\s+' => $separator,
  '('.$quoteSeparator.')+'=> $separator
  );
  
  $string = strip_tags($string);
  foreach ($trans as $key => $val){
  $string = preg_replace('#'.$key.'#iu', $val, $string);
  }
  
  $string = strtolower($string);
  
  return trim(trim($string, $separator));
  }

Uses

Use the generateSeoURL() function to generate SEO friendly URL from title string using PHP. Provide the article title or string in the first parameter of generateSeoURL() function. If you want to restrict words on the URL, provide the number of the words otherwise can omit it.
Without Words Limit:

$postTitle = 'Generate SEO Friendly URL from String in PHP';

$seoFriendlyURL = generateSeoURL($postTitle);

// Output will be: generate-seo-friendly-url-from-string-in-php

With Words Limit:

$postTitle = 'Generate SEO Friendly URL from String in PHP';

$seoFriendlyURL = generateSeoURL($postTitle, 4);

// Output will be: generate-seo-friendly-url

Should you have alternative method of getting this done, kindly quote me

 

[webguru]

This seems complicated, is there a simple method code that i can add in .htaccess