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Convert Accented Characters

For instance, if you want to use a string as part of a URL but need to make it safe for that kind of use.

function replace_accents($str) {
   $str = htmlentities($str, ENT_COMPAT, "UTF-8");
   $str = preg_replace('/&([a-zA-Z])(uml|acute|grave|circ|tilde);/','$1',$str);
   return html_entity_decode($str);
}

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  1. Jan-Marten de Boer

    Or you just use the functions that are already implemented in PHP ><

    
$unsafe = 'Hello Daniël';
$safe = urlencode($unsafe);
$transfered = urldecode($_GET['data']);
    Reply ↓
    • Jan-Marten de Boer

      the $unsafe value pulled through urlencode gives you this: “Hello%20Dani%C3%ABl”
      That are all valid characters inside a URL. It even works on so called multi byte characters, which are used in Korean, Japanese, Mandarin and similar languages. I found that out the hard way when some survey system started chopping up comments.

      The JavaScript equivalent is encodeURI / encodeURIComponent and to reverse that you use decodeURI / decodeURIComponent.

      
var response, safe, unsafe = 'Hello Daniël';
safe = encodeURIComponent(unsafe);
response = decodeURIComponent(ajaxResponse);
  2. Jan-Marten de Boer

    The go the other way around, when facing encoded characters, you might want to get the character that relates the most to an accented variant. E.g.: You want to store a song with DJ Tiësto in the title, but want it to turn out like DJ Tiesto when creating a filename in your script.

    
function transform($title){
	// Support ASCII list characters in encoded format
	while(strpos($title,'&#')!==false){
		$pointer = strpos($title,'&#');
		$plength = 5;
		$first = substr($title,0,$pointer);
		$last = substr($title,$pointer+$plength);
		$pnr = substr($title,$pointer+2,3);
		$backstring = '';
		for($i=0;$i<3;$i++){
			if(!is_numeric($pnr[$i])){
				$backstring.=$pnr[$i];
				unset($pnr[$i]);
			}
		}
		$last = $backstring.$last;
		$title = $first.htmlentities(chr($pnr)).$last;
	}

	$title = str_replace(
		array("ì","í","î","ï","ï","î","í","ì","ù"
,"ú","û","ü","ü","û","ú","ù","ç","ç","ì",
"í","î","ï","ë","ê","é","è","è",
"é","ê","ë","ë","à","á","â","ã","ä","å","à","á","â",
"ã","ä","å",".","!",",",":",";","'","\"","ù","ú","û",
"ü","ý","þ","ÿ","ù","ú","û","ü","ý",
"þ","ÿ"),
		array("i","i","i","i","i","i","i","i","u","u","u","u","u","u","u","u","c","c",
"i","i","i","i","e","e","e","e","e","e","e","e","e","a","a","a","a","a","a","a",
"a","a","a","a","a","","","","","","","","u","u","u","u","u","u","u","u","u","u",
"u","u","u","u"),
		$title
	);
	$title = str_replace(
		array('\\','/',':','"','*','?','','|','+','%'),
		'',
		$title
	);
	while(strpos($title,'  ')!==false){
		$title=str_replace('  ',' ',$title);
	}
	return $title;
}
    Reply ↓
  3. Rodney Rehm

    the original snippet doesn’t cut it. Unicodes that aren’t covered by htmlentities() are ignored altogether. If you (safely) want to transform an UTF-8 string to alph-anumeric for the use in URLs, give urlify() a shot.

    Reply ↓
  4. Julien

    I have done this :

    function replace_accents($str) {
    $str = htmlentities($str);
    $str = preg_replace(‘/&([a-zA-Z])(uml|acute|grave|circ|tilde|cedil|elig|ring|th|slash|zlig|horn);/’,'$1′,$str);
    return html_entity_decode($str);
    }

    Reply ↓
  5. Julien


    function replace_accents($str) {
    $str = htmlentities($str);
    $str = preg_replace('/&([a-zA-Z])(uml|acute|grave|circ|tilde|cedil|elig|ring|th|slash|zlig|horn);/','$1',$str);
    return html_entity_decode($str);
    }

    Reply ↓

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