How to convert a Title to a URL slug in jQuery?

Question

I have no idea where the 'slug' term came from, but here we go:

function convertToSlug(Text) {
  return Text.toLowerCase()
             .replace(/ /g, '-')
             .replace(/[^\w-]+/g, '');
}

The first replace method will change spaces to hyphens, second, replace removes anything not alphanumeric, underscore, or hyphen.

If you don't want things "like - this" turning into "like---this" then you can instead use this one:

function convertToSlug(Text) {
  return Text.toLowerCase()
             .replace(/[^\w ]+/g, '')
             .replace(/ +/g, '-');
}

That will remove hyphens (but no spaces) on the first replace, and in the second replace it will condense consecutive spaces into a single hyphen.

So "like - this" comes out as "like-this".

var slug = function(str) {
  str = str.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g, ''); // trim
  str = str.toLowerCase();

  // remove accents, swap ñ for n, etc
  var from = "ãàáäâẽèéëêìíïîõòóöôùúüûñç·/_,:;";
  var to   = "aaaaaeeeeeiiiiooooouuuunc------";
  for (var i = 0, l = from.length; i < l; i++) {
    str = str.replace(new RegExp(from.charAt(i), 'g'), to.charAt(i));
  }

  str = str.replace(/[^a-z0-9 -]/g, '') // remove invalid chars
           .replace(/\s+/g, '-') // collapse whitespace and replace by -
           .replace(/-+/g, '-'); // collapse dashes

  return str;
};

and try

slug($('#field').val())

original by: http://dense13.com/blog/2009/05/03/converting-string-to-slug-javascript/

---

EDIT: extended for more language specific chars:

var from = "ÁÄÂÀÃÅČÇĆĎÉĚËÈÊẼĔȆĞÍÌÎÏİŇÑÓÖÒÔÕØŘŔŠŞŤÚŮÜÙÛÝŸŽáäâàãåčçćďéěëèêẽĕȇğíìîïıňñóöòôõøðřŕšşťúůüùûýÿžþÞĐđßÆa·/_,:;";
var to   = "AAAAAACCCDEEEEEEEEGIIIIINNOOOOOORRSSTUUUUUYYZaaaaaacccdeeeeeeeegiiiiinnooooooorrsstuuuuuyyzbBDdBAa------";

First of all, regular expressions should not have surrounding quotes, so '/\s/g' should be /\s/g

In order to replace all non-alphanumerical characters with dashes, this should work (using your example code):

$("#Restaurant_Name").keyup(function() {
  var Text = $(this).val();
  Text = Text.toLowerCase();
  Text = Text.replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9]+/g,'-');
  $("#Restaurant_Slug").val(Text);        
});

That should do the trick...

Hope this can save someone's day...

/* Encode string to slug */
function convertToSlug( str ) {
    
  //replace all special characters | symbols with a space
  str = str.replace(/[`~!@#$%^&*()_\-+=\[\]{};:'"\\|\/,.<>?\s]/g, ' ')
           .toLowerCase();
    
  // trim spaces at start and end of string
  str = str.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/gm,'');
    
  // replace space with dash/hyphen
  str = str.replace(/\s+/g, '-');   
  document.getElementById("slug-text").innerHTML = str;
  //return str;
}

<input 
  type="text" 
  onload="convertToSlug(this.value)" 
  onkeyup="convertToSlug(this.value)"
  value="Try it Yourself" 
/>
<p id="slug-text"></p>

I found a good and complete solution for English

function slugify(string) {
  return string
    .toString()
    .trim()
    .toLowerCase()
    .replace(/\s+/g, "-")
    .replace(/[^\w\-]+/g, "")
    .replace(/\-\-+/g, "-")
    .replace(/^-+/, "")
    .replace(/-+$/, "");
}

Some examples of it in use:

slugify(12345);
// "12345"

slugify("  string with leading   and   trailing whitespace    ");
// "string-with-leading-and-trailing-whitespace"

slugify("mIxEd CaSe TiTlE");
// "mixed-case-title"

slugify("string with - existing hyphens -- ");
// "string-with-existing-hyphens"

slugify("string with Special™ characters");
// "string-with-special-characters"

Thanks to Andrew Stewart

Combining a variety of elements from the answers here with normalize provides good coverage. Keep the order of operations to incrementally clean the url.

function clean_url(s) {
    return s.toString().normalize('NFD').replace(/[\u0300-\u036f]/g, "") //remove diacritics
            .toLowerCase()
            .replace(/\s+/g, '-') //spaces to dashes
            .replace(/&/g, '-and-') //ampersand to and
            .replace(/[^\w\-]+/g, '') //remove non-words
            .replace(/\-\-+/g, '-') //collapse multiple dashes
            .replace(/^-+/, '') //trim starting dash
            .replace(/-+$/, ''); //trim ending dash
}

normlize('NFD') breaks accented characters into their components, which are basic letters plus diacritics (the accent part). replace(/[\u0300-\u036f]/g, "") purges all the diacritics, leaving the basic letters by themselves. The rest is explained with inline comments.

All you needed was a plus :)

$("#Restaurant_Name").keyup(function() {
  var Text = $(this).val();
  Text = Text.toLowerCase();
  var regExp = /\s+/g;
  Text = Text.replace(regExp,'-');
  $("#Restaurant_Slug").val(Text);        
});