Slug
A slug is a URL-friendly string derived from a human-readable label. It typically consists of lowercase letters, digits, and hyphens, with spaces and special characters removed or replaced.
Slugs are widely used in web applications to build readable, SEO-friendly URLs. For example, the title Hello World! becomes the slug hello-world.
PHP does not have a built-in slug generator, but the transformation can be achieved by combining strtolower(), preg_replace(), and transliteration via iconv(). Many frameworks and libraries also provide dedicated helpers.
<?php
function slugify(string $text): string {
$text = iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $text);
$text = strtolower($text);
$text = preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9]+/', '-', $text);
return trim($text, '-');
}
echo slugify('Hello World!'); // hello-world
?>