PHP example to create an URL from an accented string

url_title.php

<?php

/**
 * Replace accents
 *
 * Replace accented characters
 * by the corresponding unaccented characters
 *
 * @param  string $str the string
 * @return string
 */

function replace_accents($str) {

	$str = htmlentities($str);
	$str = preg_replace('/&([a-zA-Z])(uml|acute|grave|circ|tilde);/', '$1', $str);

	return html_entity_decode($str);
}


/**
 * Create URL Title
 *
 * Takes a "title" string as input and creates a
 * human-friendly URL string with either a dash
 * or an underscore as the word separator.
 *
 * @param	 string	$str the string
 * @param	 string	$separator the separator: dash, or underscore
 * @return string
 */

function url_title($str, $separator = 'dash', $lowercase = FALSE) {

	$replace = ($separator == 'dash') ? '-' : '_';

	$trans = array(
		'&\#\d+?;'       => '',
		'&\S+?;'         => '',
		'\s+'            => $replace,
		'[^a-z0-9\-\._]' => '',
		$replace.'+'     => $replace,
		$replace.'$'     => $replace,
		'^'.$replace     => $replace,
		'\.+$'           => ''
	);

	$str = strip_tags($str);

	$str = replace_accents($str);

	foreach ($trans as $key => $val) {
		$str = preg_replace("#".$key."#i", $val, $str);
	}

	if ($lowercase === TRUE) {
		$str = strtolower($str);
	}

	return trim(stripslashes($str));
}

/**
 * ######################################
 * # Example
 * ######################################
 */
echo url_title("Quelques vérités bonnes à rappeler s'agissant la durée du bail commercial et sa résiliation", 'dash', true);