slug - String slugification in Python

Question

I am in search of the best way to "slugify" string what "slug" is, and my current solution is based on this recipe

I have changed it a little bit to:

s = 'String to slugify'

slug = unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', s)
slug = slug.encode('ascii', 'ignore').lower()
slug = re.sub(r'[^a-z0-9]+', '-', slug).strip('-')
slug = re.sub(r'[-]+', '-', slug)

Anyone see any problems with this code? It is working fine, but maybe I am missing something or you know a better way?

Answer 1

There is a python package named python-slugify, which does a pretty good job of slugifying:

pip install python-slugify

Works like this:

from slugify import slugify

txt = "This is a test ---"
r = slugify(txt)
self.assertEquals(r, "this-is-a-test")

txt = "This -- is a ## test ---"
r = slugify(txt)
self.assertEquals(r, "this-is-a-test")

txt = 'C'est déjà l'été.'
r = slugify(txt)
self.assertEquals(r, "cest-deja-lete")

txt = 'Nín hǎo. Wǒ shì zhōng guó rén'
r = slugify(txt)
self.assertEquals(r, "nin-hao-wo-shi-zhong-guo-ren")

txt = 'Компьютер'
r = slugify(txt)
self.assertEquals(r, "kompiuter")

txt = 'jaja---lol-méméméoo--a'
r = slugify(txt)
self.assertEquals(r, "jaja-lol-mememeoo-a")

See More examples

This package does a bit more than what you posted (take a look at the source, it's just one file). The project is still active (got updated 2 days before I originally answered, over seven years later (last checked 2020-06-30), it still gets updated).

careful: There is a second package around, named slugify. If you have both of them, you might get a problem, as they have the same name for import. The one just named slugify didn't do all I quick-checked: "Ich hei?e" became "ich-heie" (should be "ich-heisse"), so be sure to pick the right one, when using pip or easy_install.