Jan 25, 2009 Posted by Kjell in CakePHP Hints, CakePHP Snippets | 2 comments

Fancy URLs with Inflector::slug

Motivated by my recent tweet i thought i share my method of replacing the old SluggableBehavior with core functions.

Sometimes we have more than one model that uses slugs. For example: Tags, Posts, Categories. That’s why i add the following to AppModel which allows me to call it on any model.

function slugify($text) {
	return low(Inflector::slug($text, '-'));
}

But because i am lazy i just use one of the model callbacks to automate the “slugification(tm)”.

function beforeSave() {
	if ($this->hasField('slug') && isset($this->data[$this->alias][$this->displayField])) {
		$this->data[$this->alias]['slug'] = $this->slugify($this->data[$this->alias][$this->displayField]);
	}
}

So on any model that has a “slug” field in the associated table we always slugify the displayField (usually “name”) and keep it fresh. Dead simple.

2 Responses to “Fancy URLs with Inflector::slug”

1. VoiDeT says:

   2009/04/06 at 3:14 AM

   Thanks alot for this!
   I didn’t realise it could be so automagic :)
   However i did have to include a return true; in the beforeSave call.
   Also extended it to test if a custom slug has been included!

   Thanks again!
2. Matt Huggins says:

   2009/09/18 at 5:01 AM

   If the ’slug’ column is unique to your table, then you’ll need to do something more like the following (pseudoCode):

   function slugify($text) {
   $slug = low(Inflector::slug($text, ‘-’));
   $slugs = $this->find(’all’, array(
   ‘fields’ => array(’slug’),
   ‘conditions’ => array(’slug LIKE’ => ‘%’ . $slug),
   ));
   if ($slugs) {
   $slugs = Set::extract($slugs, “/{$this->alias}/slug”);
   // loop through $slugs while incrementing $i to see if current($slugs) === “$slug-$i”, returning the new value of $slug when they’re not equal.
   } else {
   return $slug;
   }
   }