How do I generate a Friendly URL in C#?

Question

How can I go about generating a Friendly URL in C#? Currently I simple replace spaces with an underscore, but how would I go about generating URL\'s like Stack Overflow?

Answer 1

Here's how we do it. Note that there are probably more edge conditions than you realize at first glance..

if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(title)) return "";

// remove entities
title = Regex.Replace(title, @"&\w+;", "");
// remove anything that is not letters, numbers, dash, or space
title = Regex.Replace(title, @"[^A-Za-z0-9\-\s]", "");
// remove any leading or trailing spaces left over
title = title.Trim();
// replace spaces with single dash
title = Regex.Replace(title, @"\s+", "-");
// if we end up with multiple dashes, collapse to single dash            
title = Regex.Replace(title, @"\-{2,}", "-");
// make it all lower case
title = title.ToLower();
// if it's too long, clip it
if (title.Length > 80)
    title = title.Substring(0, 79);
// remove trailing dash, if there is one
if (title.EndsWith("-"))
    title = title.Substring(0, title.Length - 1);
return title;