Introduction

The Doctrine Inflector has methods for inflecting text. The features include pluralization, singularization, converting between camelCase and under_score and capitalizing words.

Installation

You can install the Inflector with composer:

$ composer require doctrine/inflector

Usage

Using the inflector is easy, you can create a new Doctrine\Inflector\Inflector instance by using the Doctrine\Inflector\InflectorFactory class:

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use Doctrine\Inflector\InflectorFactory;

$inflector = InflectorFactory::create()->build();
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By default it will create an English inflector. If you want to use another language, just pass the language you want to create an inflector for to the createForLanguage() method:

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use Doctrine\Inflector\InflectorFactory;
use Doctrine\Inflector\Language;

$inflector = InflectorFactory::createForLanguage(Language::SPANISH)->build();
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The supported languages are as follows:

• Language::ENGLISH
• Language::FRENCH
• Language::NORWEGIAN_BOKMAL
• Language::PORTUGUESE
• Language::SPANISH
• Language::TURKISH

If you want to manually construct the inflector instead of using a factory, you can do so like this:

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use Doctrine\Inflector\CachedWordInflector;
use Doctrine\Inflector\RulesetInflector;
use Doctrine\Inflector\Rules\English;

$inflector = new Inflector(
    new CachedWordInflector(new RulesetInflector(
        English\Rules::getSingularRuleset()
    )),
    new CachedWordInflector(new RulesetInflector(
        English\Rules::getPluralRuleset()
    ))
);
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Custom Setup

If you want to setup custom singular and plural rules, you can configure these in the factory:

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use Doctrine\Inflector\InflectorFactory;
use Doctrine\Inflector\Rules\Pattern;
use Doctrine\Inflector\Rules\Patterns;
use Doctrine\Inflector\Rules\Ruleset;
use Doctrine\Inflector\Rules\Substitution;
use Doctrine\Inflector\Rules\Substitutions;
use Doctrine\Inflector\Rules\Transformation;
use Doctrine\Inflector\Rules\Transformations;
use Doctrine\Inflector\Rules\Word;

$inflector = InflectorFactory::create()
    ->withSingularRules(
        new Ruleset(
            new Transformations(
                new Transformation(new Pattern('/^(bil)er$/i'), '\1'),
                new Transformation(new Pattern('/^(inflec|contribu)tors$/i'), '\1ta')
            ),
            new Patterns(new Pattern('singulars')),
            new Substitutions(new Substitution(new Word('spins'), new Word('spinor')))
        )
    )
    ->withPluralRules(
        new Ruleset(
            new Transformations(
                new Transformation(new Pattern('^(bil)er$'), '\1'),
                new Transformation(new Pattern('^(inflec|contribu)tors$'), '\1ta')
            ),
            new Patterns(new Pattern('noflect'), new Pattern('abtuse')),
            new Substitutions(
                new Substitution(new Word('amaze'), new Word('amazable')),
                new Substitution(new Word('phone'), new Word('phonezes'))
            )
        )
    )
    ->build();
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use Doctrine\Inflector\Inflector;
use Doctrine\Inflector\NoopWordInflector;

$inflector = new Inflector(new NoopWordInflector(), new NoopWordInflector());
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Tableize

Converts ModelName to model_name:

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echo $inflector->tableize('ModelName'); // model_name

Classify

Converts model_name to ModelName:

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echo $inflector->classify('model_name'); // ModelName

Camelize

This method uses Classify and then converts the first character to lowercase:

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echo $inflector->camelize('model_name'); // modelName

Capitalize

Takes a string and capitalizes all of the words, like PHP's built-in ucwords function. This extends that behavior, however, by allowing the word delimiters to be configured, rather than only separating on whitespace.

Here is an example:

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$string = 'top-o-the-morning to all_of_you!';

echo $inflector->capitalize($string); // Top-O-The-Morning To All_of_you!

echo $inflector->capitalize($string, '-_ '); // Top-O-The-Morning To All_Of_You!
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Pluralize

Returns a word in plural form.

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echo $inflector->pluralize('browser'); // browsers

Singularize

Returns a word in singular form.

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echo $inflector->singularize('browsers'); // browser

Urlize

Generate a URL friendly string from a string of text:

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echo $inflector->urlize('My first blog post'); // my-first-blog-post

Unaccent

You can unaccent a string of text using the unaccent() method:

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echo $inflector->unaccent('año'); // ano

Legacy API

The API present in Inflector 1.x is still available, but will be deprecated in a future release and dropped for 3.0. Support for languages other than English is available in the 2.0 API only.

Acknowledgements

The language rules in this library have been adapted from several different sources, including but not limited to:

• Ruby On Rails Inflector
• ICanBoogie Inflector
• CakePHP Inflector