Javascript: match slug of a URL

Question

For a given URL I want to retrieve its slug using Javascript and a regular expression. I tried the following but it only matches h and not This-is-the-slug-to-be-matched.

var url = "http://www.domain.com/region/town/This-is-the-slug-to-be-matched;art6066,1184999";
var slug = url.match(/[a-z0-9-]/);

@Gabe [etymology of "slug"](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4230846/what-is-the-etymology-of-slug) — butch, Jul 19 '13 at 19:53
I always read about "slug" as the readable part of a URL precisely describing the website's title. — orschiro, Jul 19 '13 at 19:53

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 19 '13 at 19:50

If we can assume the slug always follows the last forward slash and precedes the first colon after the last forward slash:

> var url = "http://www.domain.com/region/town/This-is-the-slug-to-be-matched;art6066,1184999";
> var slug = url.split("/").pop().split(";")[0];

Output:

> console.log(slug);
  "This-is-the-slug-to-be-matched"

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

2

This gets the value after the last slash ( / ) and before the first semi-comma ( ; ):

var slug = url.substring(url.lastIndexOf('/')+1, url.indexOf(';'));

So in this case, slug == "This-is-the-slug-to-be-matched".

Performance review

Comparing .split.pop() answers and .subtring() with .lastIndexOf() functions, my method is at least 35% faster. Scoring ~4m ops/sec against ~2.6m ops/sec.

If performance is an important matter to you, you might want to consider my answer.

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

1
1

answered Jul 19 '13 at 19:50

Jeff Noel

6,972
3
35
63

Thanks, but I did not want to match the `art6066,1184999` part. – orschiro Jul 19 '13 at 19:51

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 19 '13 at 19:40

1

Try this:

var slug = url.match(/.*\/([-a-z0-9]+/i)[1];

.*\/ skips over everything until the last /. [-a-z0-9]+ matches 1 or more alphanumerics or hyphens. Putting the latter in (...) makes it a capture group, and [1] returns the first capture group.

answered Jul 19 '13 at 19:40

Barmar

596,455
48
393
495

Atif · Answer 4 · 2013-07-19T19:51:21.920

1

Yet another way (I am assuming you also want ;art6066,1184999 in slug)

var url = "http://www.domain.com/region/town/This-is-the-slug-to-be-matched;art6066,1184999";   
var slug = url.split('/').pop();

Update based on cr0's comment

var slug = url.split('/').pop().split(';')[0];

edited Jul 19 '13 at 19:51

answered Jul 19 '13 at 19:43

Atif

9,948
19
60
95

I always thought that a slug is used to link to an article in a way you can remember. So I don't get why there are parameters like articleid which is hard to memorize. – cr0 Jul 19 '13 at 19:48

Javascript: match slug of a URL

4 Answers4

Performance review

Update based on cr0's comment

Linked