Doctrine Inflector is a PHP library that provides methods for singularizing and pluralizing English nouns, as well as other string transformations. It's widely used in various PHP frameworks and applications for tasks like database schema manipulation and generating human-readable output from programmatic names.

Pros

• Robust and well-tested inflection rules for English language
• Easy integration with popular PHP frameworks like Laravel and Symfony
• Supports custom inflection rules for edge cases or domain-specific terminology
• Actively maintained with regular updates and improvements

Cons

• Limited to English language inflections
• May not handle all complex or irregular words perfectly
• Relatively large library size for a single-purpose tool
• Can be overkill for simple projects with minimal inflection needs

Code Examples

1. Basic singularization and pluralization:

use Doctrine\Inflector\InflectorFactory;

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

echo $inflector->singularize('categories'); // Outputs: category
echo $inflector->pluralize('person'); // Outputs: people

2. Custom inflection rules:

use Doctrine\Inflector\InflectorFactory;
use Doctrine\Inflector\Rules\Pattern;
use Doctrine\Inflector\Rules\Substitution;
use Doctrine\Inflector\Rules\Word;

$inflector = InflectorFactory::create()
    ->withSingularRules(
        new Substitution(new Pattern('/^(ox)en/i'), '\1'),
        new Word('universe', 'multiverse')
    )
    ->build();

echo $inflector->singularize('oxen'); // Outputs: ox
echo $inflector->pluralize('universe'); // Outputs: multiverse

3. String transformations:

use Doctrine\Inflector\InflectorFactory;

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

echo $inflector->tableize('UserGroup'); // Outputs: user_groups
echo $inflector->classify('user_groups'); // Outputs: UserGroup
echo $inflector->camelize('user_group'); // Outputs: userGroup

Getting Started

To use Doctrine Inflector in your PHP project, first install it via Composer:

composer require doctrine/inflector

Then, in your PHP code:

use Doctrine\Inflector\InflectorFactory;

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

// Now you can use $inflector to perform inflections
$plural = $inflector->pluralize('category');
$singular = $inflector->singularize('children');

This creates an instance of the Inflector with default English rules. You can now use various methods like pluralize(), singularize(), tableize(), and more to transform your strings as needed.