Easy way of generating a slug name column from the name column?

Here is an easy solution with a single query :

UPDATE `my_table` SET alias = lower(name),
alias = replace(alias, '.', ' '),
alias = replace(alias, '\'', '-'),
alias = replace(alias,'š','s'),
alias = replace(alias,'Ð','Dj'),
alias = replace(alias,'ž','z'),
alias = replace(alias,'Þ','B'),
alias = replace(alias,'ß','Ss'),
alias = replace(alias,'à','a'),
alias = replace(alias,'á','a'),
alias = replace(alias,'â','a'),
alias = replace(alias,'ã','a'),
alias = replace(alias,'ä','a'),
alias = replace(alias,'å','a'),
alias = replace(alias,'æ','a'),
alias = replace(alias,'ç','c'),
alias = replace(alias,'è','e'),
alias = replace(alias,'é','e'),
alias = replace(alias,'ê','e'),
alias = replace(alias,'ë','e'),
alias = replace(alias,'ì','i'),
alias = replace(alias,'í','i'),
alias = replace(alias,'î','i'),
alias = replace(alias,'ï','i'),
alias = replace(alias,'ð','o'),
alias = replace(alias,'ñ','n'),
alias = replace(alias,'ò','o'),
alias = replace(alias,'ó','o'),
alias = replace(alias,'ô','o'),
alias = replace(alias,'õ','o'),
alias = replace(alias,'ö','o'),
alias = replace(alias,'ø','o'),
alias = replace(alias,'ù','u'),
alias = replace(alias,'ú','u'),
alias = replace(alias,'û','u'),
alias = replace(alias,'ý','y'),
alias = replace(alias,'ý','y'),
alias = replace(alias,'þ','b'),
alias = replace(alias,'ÿ','y'),
alias = replace(alias,'ƒ','f'),
alias = replace(alias, 'œ', 'oe'),
alias = replace(alias, '€', 'euro'),
alias = replace(alias, '$', 'dollars'),
alias = replace(alias, '£', ''),
alias = trim(alias),
alias = replace(alias, ' ', '-'),
alias = replace(alias, '--', '-') ;

In this example :

• 'my_table' is the name of the table,
• 'name' is the original field
• 'alias' is the name of my slug field

Hope it helps !

Change your tbl_name and field_name and slug_field_name

SELECT field_name,
 REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
 REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
 REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
 LOWER(TRIM(field_name)), ':', ''), ')', ''), '(', ''), ',', ''), '\\', ''), '\/', ''), '\"', ''), '?', ''), '\'', ''), '&', ''), '!', ''), '.', ''), ' ', '-'), '--', '-'), '--', '-')
AS `slug_field_name`
FROM tbl_name

For test 'Your String' result your-string:

SELECT
 REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
 REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
 REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
 LOWER(TRIM('Your String')), ':', ''), ')', ''), '(', ''), ',', ''), '\\', ''), '\/', ''), '\"', ''), '?', ''), '\'', ''), '&', ''), '!', ''), '.', ''), ' ', '-'), '--', '-'), '--', '-')
AS `slug_test`

For special characters:

Append a [REPLACE(] and a [, ':', '')]

For example ö character in this string "Hallo schöne Welt"

Result is "hallo-schone-welt"

SELECT
 REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
 REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
 REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
 REPLACE(
 LOWER(TRIM('Hallo schöne Welt')), 'ö', 'o'), ':', ''), ')', ''), '(', ''), ',', ''), '\\', ''), '\/', ''), '\"', ''), '?', ''), '\'', ''), '&', ''), '!', ''), '.', ''), ' ', '-'), '--', '-'), '--', '-')
AS `slug_test`

You can certainly do a string replace using MySQL. The official documentation lists quite a few string functions you might find useful.

SELECT REPLACE('Foo Bar!~~~~', '~', '');
SELECT LOWER('Foo Bar!');

I also ran across this blog post on using regular expressions in MySQL.

Updated: Details from the blog post I mentioned:

So what I would recommend is creating a function for doing a regular expression replace:

DELIMITER $$
FUNCTION `regex_replace`(pattern varchar(1000),replacement varchar(1000),original varchar(1000))
RETURNS varchar(1000)
DETERMINISTIC
BEGIN
DECLARE temp VARCHAR(1000);
DECLARE ch VARCHAR(1);
DECLARE i INT;
SET i = 1;
SET temp = original;
IF original REGEXP pattern THEN
    SET temp = "";
    loop_label: LOOP
    IF i>CHAR_LENGTH(original) THEN
        LEAVE loop_label;
    END IF;
    SET ch = SUBSTRING(original,i,1);
    IF NOT ch REGEXP pattern THEN
        SET temp = CONCAT(temp,ch);
    ELSE
        SET temp = CONCAT(temp,replacement);
    END IF;
    SET i=i+1;
END LOOP;
END IF;
RETURN temp;
END$$
DELIMITER ;

Then something akin to the following

SELECT regex_replace('[^a-zA-Z0-9]+', '', '%$&?/’|test><+-,][)(' )

If you're not comfortable with that approach, you can always just run some update calls using replace

update db_products set Slug_Name = replace(Name, '~', '');