I love coming across old code *cough* garbage *cough*

The purpose of this was to take a title, and create something url safe and in the fashion a client was wanting. The first function was old code, so don’t blame me.

function cleanUrl($url)
{
  $find =        array('/--/', '/ - /','/ /', '/!/', '/"/', "/'/", '/--/');
  $replace =    array('-', '-', '-', '', '', '', '-');

  $result = strtr($url, "`~@#$%^&*()_=+|[]{};:,./<>?", "---------------------------");

  return strtolower(preg_replace($find, $replace, strip_tags(stripslashes(trim($result)))));
}

Isn’t it horrible?

I rewrote the function to…

function cleanUrl($url)
{
  $url = strtolower($url);

  $url = preg_replace("/[^a-z0-9\s+]/", '', $url);
  $url = preg_replace("/[\s]{1,}/", '-', $url);

  return $url;
}

That makes me happier.

Ewerl is a new URL rewritting site with cool features.

Here’s a simple function to return the Ewerl url. It’s only being used for the main url, but could easily be adjusted to return an array. I just didn’t have a need for it in my case at this time.

/**
 * Returns an Ewerl url if available.
 * Otherwise the original that was passed in.
 * Returns false if..
 * 1. JSON extension isn't installed.
 * 2. No url was entered.
 * 3. No response from server.
 *
 * @todo Add URL validation.
 *
 * @param string $url
 * @return string URL, or false.
 * @author Casey Wilson 
 */
function getEwerl($url) {
	/**
	 * Verify JSON extension is loaded.
	 */
	if (!extension_loaded('JSON')) return false;

	/**
	 * Url wasn't passed
	 */
	if (!$url) return false;

	/**
	 * Assign / Prep vars.
	 */
	$postUrl = 'http://ewerl.com/api/v1/make/url=';
	$urlEncoded = base64_encode($url);

	$response = file_get_contents($postUrl . $urlEncoded);

	if (!$response) {
		return $url;
	}

	/**
	 * Should have returned a JSON object.
	 */
	$jsonObj = json_decode($response);

	/**
	 * If either Status not set, or status is false, return original url.
	 */
	if (!isset($jsonObj->status) || $jsonObj->status == 'FALSE') {
		return $url;
	}

	return $jsonObj->url_main;
}

I needed to transform some long urls into tiny ones :p

Figured I’d post something up here that may be useful to someone else.

Code was updated.

/**
 * Get TinyUrl for $url
 *
 * @param string $url Must be a valid url
 */
function getTinyUrl($url) {
	if (! $url) {
		return false;
	}

	if (strlen ( $url ) < 30) {
		return $url;
	}

	$response = file_get_contents ( 'http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=' . $url );

	return ($response) ? $response : $url;
}