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:

.. code-block:: console

$ 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:

.. code-block:: php

use Doctrine\Inflector\InflectorFactory;

$inflector = InflectorFactory::create()->build();

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:

.. code-block:: php

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

$inflector = InflectorFactory::createForLanguage(Language::SPANISH)->build();

The supported languages are as follows:

Language::ENGLISH
Language::ESPERANTO
Language::FRENCH
Language::ITALIAN
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:

.. code-block:: php

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()
    ))
);

Adding Languages

If you are interested in adding support for your language, take a look at the other languages defined in the Doctrine\Inflector\Rules namespace and the tests located in Doctrine\Tests\Inflector\Rules. You can copy one of the languages and update the rules for your language.

Once you have done this, send a pull request to the doctrine/inflector repository with the additions.

Custom Setup

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

.. code-block:: php

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();

No operation inflector

The Doctrine\Inflector\NoopWordInflector may be used to configure an inflector that doesn't perform any operation for pluralization and/or singularization. If will simply return the input as output.

This is an implementation of the Null Object design pattern <https://sourcemaking.com/design_patterns/null_object>_.

.. code-block:: php

use Doctrine\Inflector\Inflector;
use Doctrine\Inflector\NoopWordInflector;

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

Tableize

Converts ModelName to model_name:

.. code-block:: php

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

Classify

Converts model_name to ModelName:

.. code-block:: php

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

Camelize

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

.. code-block:: php

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:

.. code-block:: php

$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!

Pluralize

Returns a word in plural form.

.. code-block:: php

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

Singularize

Returns a word in singular form.

.. code-block:: php

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

Urlize

Generate a URL friendly string from a string of text:

.. code-block:: php

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

Unaccent

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

.. code-block:: php

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 <http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/Inflector.html>_
ICanBoogie Inflector <https://github.com/ICanBoogie/Inflector>_
CakePHP Inflector <https://book.cakephp.org/3.0/en/core-libraries/inflector.html>_