Friendly Detail Page URLs in Laravel 5

Activity.php

class Activity extends Model
{

    /**
     * Convert a string to ASCII
     *
     * @source http://cubiq.org/the-perfect-php-clean-url-generator
     * @param $str
     * @param array $replace
     * @param string $delimiter
     * @return string
     */
    public function toAscii($str, $replace=array(), $delimiter='-') {
        if( !empty($replace) ) {
            $str = str_replace((array)$replace, ' ', $str);
        }

        $clean = iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $str);
        $clean = preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9\/_|+ -]/", '', $clean);
        $clean = strtolower(trim($clean, '-'));
        $clean = preg_replace("/[\/_|+ -]+/", $delimiter, $clean);

        return $clean;
    }

    /**
     * Check if the alias is a registered route
     *
     * @param $alias
     * @return bool
     */
    protected function isBlacklisted($alias)
    {
        $routes = \Route::getRoutes();
        foreach($routes->getRoutes() as $route) {
            $parts = explode('/', $route->getUri());
            if (count($parts) > 0 && $parts[0] == $alias) {
                return true;
            }
        }
        return false;
    }

    protected function generateAlias() {
        $ascii = $this->toAscii($this->name);

        $alias = $ascii;
        $increment = 0;
        while (self::whereAlias($alias)->count() > 0 || $this->isBlacklisted($alias)) {
            $increment++;
            $alias = $ascii . '-' . $increment;
        }

        return $alias;
    }

    public function save(array $options = array())
    {
        if ($this->alias == '') {
            $this->alias = $this->generateAlias();
        }
        parent::save();
    }

routes.php

// as last entry

Route::get('{alias}', 'WelcomeController@getDetail');

WelcomeController.php

class WelcomeController extends Controller {

	public function getDetail($alias){

		$activity = Activity::whereAlias($alias)->first();


		return view('detail')
			->with('activity', $activity);

	}