How to Easily Generate slugs for Eloquent models in Laravel

Laravel Sluggable is a package by Spatie that provides a trait that will generate a unique slug when saving any Eloquent model.

$model = new EloquentModel();
$model->name = 'active record is awesome';
$model->save();

echo $model->slug; // outputs "active-record-is-awesome"

The slugs are generated with the Laravels Str::slug method, whereby spaces are converted to ‘-’.

Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require spatie/laravel-sluggable

Usage

Your Eloquent models should use the Spatie\Sluggable\HasSlug trait and the Spatie\Sluggable\SlugOptions class. The trait contains an abstract method getSlugOptions() that you must implement yourself.

Your models’ migrations should have a field to save the generated slug to.

Here’s an example of how to implement the trait:

namespace App;

use Spatie\Sluggable\HasSlug;
use Spatie\Sluggable\SlugOptions;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class YourEloquentModel extends Model
{
    use HasSlug;

    /**
     * Get the options for generating the slug.
     */
    public function getSlugOptions() : SlugOptions
    {
        return SlugOptions::create()
            ->generateSlugsFrom('name')
            ->saveSlugsTo('slug');
    }
}

With its migration:

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;

class CreateYourEloquentModelTable extends Migration
{
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('your_eloquent_models', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->increments('id');
            $table->string('slug'); // Field name same as your `saveSlugsTo`
            $table->string('name');
            $table->timestamps();
        });
    }
}

Using slugs in routes

To use the generated slug in routes, remember to use Laravel’s implicit route model binding:

namespace App;

use Spatie\Sluggable\HasSlug;
use Spatie\Sluggable\SlugOptions;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class YourEloquentModel extends Model
{
    use HasSlug;

    /**
     * Get the options for generating the slug.
     */
    public function getSlugOptions() : SlugOptions
    {
        return SlugOptions::create()
            ->generateSlugsFrom('name')
            ->saveSlugsTo('slug');
    }

    /**
     * Get the route key for the model.
     *
     * @return string
     */
    public function getRouteKeyName()
    {
        return 'slug';
    }
}

Using multiple fields to create the slug

Want to use multiple fields as the basis for a slug? No problem!

public function getSlugOptions() : SlugOptions
{
    return SlugOptions::create()
        ->generateSlugsFrom(['first_name', 'last_name'])
        ->saveSlugsTo('slug');
}

Customizing slug generation

You can also pass a callable to generateSlugsFrom.
By default, the package will generate unique slugs by appending ‘-’ and a number, to a slug that already exists.
You can disable this behavior by calling allowDuplicateSlugs.

public function getSlugOptions() : SlugOptions
{
    return SlugOptions::create()
        ->generateSlugsFrom('name')
        ->saveSlugsTo('slug')
        ->allowDuplicateSlugs();
}

Limiting the length of a slug

You can also put a maximum size limit on the created slug:

public function getSlugOptions() : SlugOptions
{
    return SlugOptions::create()
        ->generateSlugsFrom('name')
        ->saveSlugsTo('slug')
        ->slugsShouldBeNoLongerThan(50);
}

The slug may be slightly longer than the value specified, due to the suffix which is added to make it unique.
You can also use a custom separator by calling usingSeparator

public function getSlugOptions() : SlugOptions
{
    return SlugOptions::create()
        ->generateSlugsFrom('name')
        ->saveSlugsTo('slug')
        ->usingSeparator('_');
}

Setting the slug language

To set the language used by Str::slug you may call using language

public function getSlugOptions() : SlugOptions
{
    return SlugOptions::create()
        ->generateSlugsFrom('name')
        ->saveSlugsTo('slug')
        ->usingLanguage('nl');

}

Overriding slugs

You can also override the generated slug just by setting it to another value than the generated slug.

$model = EloquentModel::create(['name' => 'my name']); //slug is now "my-name";
$model->slug = 'my-custom-url';
$model->save(); //slug is now "my-custom-url";

Prevent slug updates

Similarly, if you want to prevent the slug from being updated on model updates, call doNotGenerateSlugsOnUpdate().

public function getSlugOptions() : SlugOptions
{
    return SlugOptions::create()
        ->generateSlugsFrom('name')
        ->saveSlugsTo('slug')
        ->doNotGenerateSlugsOnUpdate();
}

This can be helpful for creating permalinks that don’t change until you explicitly want them to.

$model = EloquentModel::create(['name' => 'my name']); //slug is now "my-name";
$model->save();

$model->name = 'changed name';
$model->save(); //slug stays "my-name"

Regenerating slugs

If you want to explicitly update the slug on the model you can call generateSlug() on your model at any time to make the slug according to your other options. Don’t forget to save() the model to persist the update to your database.

There is a lot more about this package, For more information, you can visit its documentation on Github.