slugany

A multi-language slugify library with zero runtime dependencies. MIT-licensed, fully typed, and audited for idempotency — a clean alternative to python-slugify with no GPL baggage.

530 tests · 100% coverage · mypy --strict clean · ruff clean · 1,100+ randomized contract checks passed

Why slugany?

python-slugify is the de facto standard, but it drags in text-unidecode (GPL) and over 1,000 lines of code. slugany was built from scratch to be:

	python-slugify	unicode-slugify	slugany
Runtime deps	text-unidecode (GPL)	unidecode (GPL)	Zero
License	GPL	GPL	MIT
Languages	Limited	Limited	Built-in: es, pt, de, fr, it
Caching	No	No	lru_cache built-in (512)
Typing	Partial	Partial	Fully typed, py.typed marker
Core size	~1,000+ lines	~800 lines	~550 lines
Idempotency	Not guaranteed	Not guaranteed	Guaranteed & tested
CLI	Separate package	No	Built-in
Style presets	No	No	8 built-in
Emoji handling	No	No	strip, text, keep
Confusables	No	No	Cyrillic + Greek
CSS-safe	No	No	Built-in
Smart punctuation	No	No	Built-in
HTML entities	No	No	Built-in
Fallback	No	No	Built-in

Features

• Zero runtime deps — only the Python standard library
• Multi-language transliteration — Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian
• 8 case styles — kebab, snake, camel, pascal, dot, train, filename, url
• Smart punctuation — normalizes curly quotes, em-dashes, NBSP, zero-width chars, bullets
• HTML entity decoding — & → & before processing
• Emoji handling — strip, keep, or convert to text
• Confusable detection — Cyrillic homoglyphs → Latin equivalents
• Stopwords removal — filter out common words
• Custom replacements — pre- and post-pipeline string substitution
• CSS-safe slugs — prefix digit-leading slugs with s-
• Max length with word boundaries — truncate without breaking words
• Unicode preservation — allow_unicode=True keeps non-ASCII chars
• Fallback for empty slugs — never get an empty string
• Built-in lru_cache — results cached automatically (maxsize=512)
• CLI with stdin support — pipe text directly: echo "text" | slugany
• Idempotent — slugify(slugify(x)) == slugify(x), guaranteed and tested
• Fully typed — type hints on every public API, py.typed marker (PEP 561)
• ~550 lines core — auditable, no bloat

Installation

pip install slugany

Requires Python 3.11+. No runtime dependencies.

Quickstart

from slugany import slugify

slugify("¡Hola Mundo!")            # "hola-mundo"
slugify("Café résumé naïve")       # "cafe-resume-naive"
slugify("Ñandú coração")           # "nandu-coracao"
slugify("Über Straße", lang="de")  # "ueber-strasse"
slugify("Hello 🎉 World")          # "hello-world"

CLI

# Basic usage
slugany "Hello World"
# hello-world

# Pipe from stdin
echo "Café" | slugany
# cafe

# Case styles
slugany "hello world" --style camel
# helloWorld

slugany "hello world" --style train
# Hello-World

# Truncation with word boundary
slugany "hello-world-foo-bar" --max-length 10 --word-boundary
# hello-world

# Batch mode (one slug per line)
slugany --batch < input.txt

# CSS-safe slugs
slugany "123 main st" --css-safe
# s-123-main-st

Case Styles

slugify("hello world", style="kebab")     # "hello-world"
slugify("hello world", style="snake")     # "hello_world"
slugify("hello world", style="camel")     # "helloWorld"
slugify("hello world", style="pascal")    # "HelloWorld"
slugify("hello world", style="dot")       # "hello.world"
slugify("hello world", style="train")     # "Hello-World"
slugify("hello world", style="filename")  # "Hello-World"
slugify("hello world", style="url")       # "hello-world"

Languages

Built-in transliteration tables for five languages:

slugify("España", lang="es")          # "espana"
slugify("Coração", lang="pt")         # "coracao"
slugify("Über Straße", lang="de")     # "ueber-strasse"
slugify("Cœur", lang="fr")            # "coeur"
slugify("Caffè", lang="it")           # "caffe"

Advanced

from slugany import slugify, slugify_batch, is_slug

# Stopwords — remove common words
slugify("the quick brown fox", stopwords=["the", "fox"])  # "quick-brown"

# Custom replacements — substitute before and after transliteration
slugify("hello world", replacements={"hello": "hi"})  # "hi-world"
slugify("Straße", replacements={"ß": "ss"})           # "strass"

# Emoji handling
slugify("Hello 🎉 World", emoji_mode="strip")  # "hello-world"
slugify("Hello 🎉 World", emoji_mode="text")   # "helloparty-popperworld"
slugify("Hello 🎉 World", emoji_mode="keep", allow_unicode=True)  # "hello-🎉-world"

# CSS-safe — prefix digit-leading slugs for CSS class names
slugify("123 main st", css_safe=True)  # "s-123-main-st"

# Fallback — never get an empty string
slugify("!!!", fallback="untitled")  # "untitled"

# Unicode preservation — keep non-ASCII characters
slugify("Ñandú", allow_unicode=True)  # "ñandú"

# Max length with word boundary — truncate without breaking words
slugify("hello world foo bar", max_length=15, word_boundary=True)  # "hello-world"

# Batch processing
slugify_batch(["Hello World", "Café Résumé"])  # ["hello-world", "cafe-resume"]

# Validation
is_slug("hello-world")              # True
is_slug("hello world")              # False
is_slug("hello_world", separator="_")  # True
is_slug("hello-wörld", allow_unicode=True)  # True

# Cache inspection
from slugany import slugify
slugify.cache_info()   # CacheInfo(hits=0, misses=1, maxsize=512, currsize=1)
slugify.cache_clear()  # Clear the cache

Slugifier — Reusable Builder Pattern

For high-throughput scenarios, create a Slugifier once and reuse it. Config validation happens once, not per call:

from slugany import Slugifier

# Create once
s = Slugifier.style("camel", max_length=20, stopwords=["the", "a"])

# Reuse
s("The Quick Brown Fox")   # "quickBrownFox"
s("A Lazy Dog")            # "lazyDog"
s("Hello World")           # "helloWorld"

# Inspect config
s.config  # SlugConfig(style='camel', max_length=20, ...)

FastAPI / Pydantic Integration

Use slugany with Pydantic for automatic slug generation in API models:

from pydantic import BaseModel, field_validator
from slugany import slugify

class Article(BaseModel):
    title: str
    slug: str

    @field_validator("slug", mode="before")
    @classmethod
    def generate_slug(cls, v: str, info) -> str:
        if not v and info.data.get("title"):
            return slugify(info.data["title"], style="kebab")
        return slugify(v, style="kebab") if v else ""

article = Article(title="Hello World!", slug="")
print(article.slug)  # "hello-world"

Slug type with Annotated

from typing import Annotated
from pydantic import BaseModel, StringConstraints
from slugany import slugify, is_slug

Slug = Annotated[str, StringConstraints(pattern=r"^[a-z0-9]+(-[a-z0-9]+)*$")]

class Tag(BaseModel):
    name: str
    slug: Slug

    @field_validator("slug", mode="before")
    @classmethod
    def auto_slug(cls, v: str, info) -> str:
        return slugify(v or info.data.get("name", ""))

tag = Tag(name="Machine Learning", slug="")
print(tag.slug)  # "machine-learning"

FastAPI query parameter

from fastapi import FastAPI, Query
from slugany import slugify

app = FastAPI()

@app.get("/search")
async def search(q: str = Query(..., min_length=1)):
    slug = slugify(q, fallback="all")
    return {"query": q, "slug": slug}

deconfuse — Standalone Utility

Replace confusable Unicode homoglyphs with Latin equivalents:

from slugany import deconfuse

deconfuse("саfe")   # "cafe" — Cyrillic s → Latin c
deconfuse("αβγ")    # "abg"  — Greek → Latin
deconfuse("Hello")  # "Hello" — no change

slugify() applies deconfusion automatically. Use deconfuse() standalone when you need the raw replacement without full slugification.

Migration from python-slugify

slugany is designed as a drop-in replacement. The main difference is that all arguments are keyword-only:

# python-slugify
from slugify import slugify
slugify("Hello World", "_")
slugify("Hello World", separator="_", stopwords=["the"])

# slugany
from slugany import slugify
slugify("Hello World", separator="_")
slugify("Hello World", separator="_", stopwords=["the"])

From unicode-slugify

# unicode-slugify
from slugify import slugify
slugify("Hello World")

# slugany — same result, zero deps
from slugany import slugify
slugify("Hello World")  # "hello-world"

See the migration guide for full details.

Documentation

Full documentation at mathiaspaulenko.github.io/slugany

• Basic usage
• Styles & presets
• Languages
• CLI reference
• API reference
• Slugifier
• deconfuse()
• Contracts & guarantees
• Performance

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup, PR process, and code style guidelines.

Please read our Code of Conduct before participating.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.