Is there a Joomla function to generate the 'alias' field?

Question

I'm writing my own component for Joomla 1.5. I'm trying to figure out how to generate an "alias" (friendly URL slug) for the content I add. In other words, if the title is "The article title", Joomla would use the-article-title by default (you can edit it if you like).

Is there a built-in Joomla function that will do this for me?

Answer 1

Line 123 of libraries/joomla/database/table/content.php implements JFilterOutput::stringURLSafe(). Pass in the string you want to make "alias friendly" and it will return what you need.