The following function shows just how easy it is to generate a URL safe string for mod_rewrite. I’ve even included a demo of this code below.

Try it out…

function MakeURLSafeString($string){
    return trim(preg_replace('/[-]{2,}/', '-', preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9]+/', '-', strtolower($_POST['TheString']))), '-');
}

That’s all there is to it! To break it down a little, you could have written it as per the following:

function MakeURLSafeString($string){
    $string = strtolower($string); // Makes everything lowercase (just looks tidier).
    $string = preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9]+/', '-', $string); // Replaces all non-alphanumeric characters with a hyphen.
    $string = preg_replace('/[-]{2,}/', '-', $string); // Replaces one or more occurrences of a hyphen, with a single one.
    $string = trim($string, '-'); // This ensures that our string doesn't start or end with a hyphen.
    return $string;
}

Why not head over there now and check it out. It’s free!

Make sure you have a .htaccess and .htpasswd file in the directory you want to secure, then add the entries once you’ve generated your password.

The code to generate an MD5 hash using PHP is simple:

md5($string_to_convert);