The CakePHP framework API is a treasure trove of often undiscovered methods and functionality. Recently I came across the Inflector Class methods and noticed the “slug” method close to the bottom of the documentation, which is documented thus:
Returns a string with all spaces converted to underscores (by default), accented characters converted to non-accented characters, and non word characters removed.
CakePHP’s database abstraction is just one of the reasons to use this powerful framework for agile web development. However, it is not always obvious how to build complex queries. I recently had to implement a MySQL full text search against a music database that searched on titles, descriptions and tags. Full text search is a quick, and not too dirty way to make a pretty decent search, although it does come with a caveat, as described in the MySQL documentation:
Full-text indexes can be used only with
MyISAMtables, and can be created only forCHAR,VARCHAR, orTEXTcolumns.