How does Stack Overflow generate its SEO-friendly URLs?

Question

What is a good complete regular expression or some other process that would take the title:

How do you change a title to be part of the URL like Stack

Answer 1

I liked the way this is done without using regular expressions, so I ported it to PHP. I just added a function called is_between to check characters:

function is_between($val, $min, $max)
{
    $val = (int) $val; $min = (int) $min; $max = (int) $max;

    return ($val >= $min && $val <= $max);
}

function international_char_to_ascii($char)
{
    if (mb_strpos('àåáâäãåa', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 'a';
    }

    if (mb_strpos('èéêëe', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 'e';
    }

    if (mb_strpos('ìíîïi', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 'i';
    }

    if (mb_strpos('òóôõö', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 'o';
    }

    if (mb_strpos('ùúûüuu', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 'u';
    }

    if (mb_strpos('çccc', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 'c';
    }

    if (mb_strpos('zzž', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 'z';
    }

    if (mb_strpos('ssšs', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 's';
    }

    if (mb_strpos('ñn', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 'n';
    }

    if (mb_strpos('ýÿ', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 'y';
    }

    if (mb_strpos('gg', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 'g';
    }

    if (mb_strpos('r', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 'r';
    }

    if (mb_strpos('l', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 'l';
    }

    if (mb_strpos('d', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 'd';
    }

    if (mb_strpos('ß', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 'ss';
    }

    if (mb_strpos('Þ', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 'th';
    }

    if (mb_strpos('h', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 'h';
    }

    if (mb_strpos('j', $char) !== false)
    {
        return 'j';
    }
    return '';
}

function url_friendly_title($url_title)
{
    if (empty($url_title))
    {
        return '';
    }

    $url_title = mb_strtolower($url_title);

    $url_title_max_length   = 80;
    $url_title_length       = mb_strlen($url_title);
    $url_title_friendly     = '';
    $url_title_dash_added   = false;
    $url_title_char = '';

    for ($i = 0; $i < $url_title_length; $i++)
    {
        $url_title_char     = mb_substr($url_title, $i, 1);

        if (strlen($url_title_char) == 2)
        {
            $url_title_ascii    = ord($url_title_char[0]) * 256 + ord($url_title_char[1]) . "\r\n";
        }
        else
        {
            $url_title_ascii    = ord($url_title_char);
        }

        if (is_between($url_title_ascii, 97, 122) || is_between($url_title_ascii, 48, 57))
        {
            $url_title_friendly .= $url_title_char;

            $url_title_dash_added = false;
        }
        elseif(is_between($url_title_ascii, 65, 90))
        {
            $url_title_friendly .= chr(($url_title_ascii | 32));

            $url_title_dash_added = false;
        }
        elseif($url_title_ascii == 32 || $url_title_ascii == 44 || $url_title_ascii == 46 || $url_title_ascii == 47 || $url_title_ascii == 92 || $url_title_ascii == 45 || $url_title_ascii == 47 || $url_title_ascii == 95 || $url_title_ascii == 61)
        {
            if (!$url_title_dash_added && mb_strlen($url_title_friendly) > 0)
            {
                $url_title_friendly .= chr(45);

                $url_title_dash_added = true;
            }
        }
        else if ($url_title_ascii >= 128)
        {
            $url_title_previous_length = mb_strlen($url_title_friendly);

            $url_title_friendly .= international_char_to_ascii($url_title_char);

            if ($url_title_previous_length != mb_strlen($url_title_friendly))
            {
                $url_title_dash_added = false;
            }
        }

        if ($i == $url_title_max_length)
        {
            break;
        }
    }

    if ($url_title_dash_added)
    {
        return mb_substr($url_title_friendly, 0, -1);
    }
    else
    {
        return $url_title_friendly;
    }
}