Ruby post title to slug

Question

How should I convert a post title to a slug in Ruby?

The title can have any characters, but I only want the slug to allow [a-z0-9-_] (Should it allow an

Answer 1

to_slug is a great Rails plugin that handles pretty much everything, including funky characters, but its implementation is very simple. Chuck it onto String and you'll be sorted. Here's the source condensed down:

String.class_eval do
  def to_slug
    value = self.mb_chars.normalize(:kd).gsub(/[^\x00-\x7F]/n, '').to_s
    value.gsub!(/[']+/, '')
    value.gsub!(/\W+/, ' ')
    value.strip!
    value.downcase!
    value.gsub!(' ', '-')
    value
  end
end