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28 Sep 2021 - by 'Maurits van der Schee'
Ruby on Rails was preaching plural table names back in 2005 and DHH shipped Rails with an "Inflector" class: a class that could convert (English) plurals into singulars and vice versa. This was used to map the plural table names to the singular "Model" class names when doing "scaffolding" (code generation).
The Inflector class had a "singularize" and a "pluralize" method that you could call with either the plural or the singular form of an (English) noun and it would convert it for you. Thus, it could convert the string 'lives' to 'life' with the "singularize" method and 'person' to 'people' with the "pluralize" method. This post will explain how this magical "Inflector" class worked.
NB: Although I fully bought into all Rails' conventions back in the day, I'm no longer convinced the theoretical benefit of plural table names is worth it's practical downsides. I have written a post to explain in detail why I feel database tables should be named with singular nouns.
For anyone in need of a good implementation of an Inflector in PHP I suggest to take a look at Packagist. On Packagist you can find the following 3 popular packages that provide a "singularize" and "pluralize" function:
The first one can be installed with the following composer command:
Subscribecomposer require doctrine/inflector
Now you can use:
use \Doctrine\Inflector\InflectorFactory;
$factory = InflectorFactory::create();
$inflector = $factory->build();
$singular = $inflector->singularize($plural);
The static "create" call on the InflectorFactory creates a LanguageInflectorFactory that can in turn "build" an Inflector. I always need to smile when I encounter a FactoryFactory in the wild.
If you want to fully understand what the Inflector is doing (or want to implement your own) you can start where I started: I've chosen to copy the language rules from the latest Ruby on Rails and rewrite the "singularize" and "pluralize" functions from scratch.
<?php
/**
* This class is a port of the Ruby on Rails Inflector class. From the docs:
*
* > Defines the standard inflection rules. These are the starting point for
* > new projects and are not considered complete. The current set of inflection
* > rules is frozen. This means, we do not change them to become more complete.
* > This is a safety measure to keep existing applications from breaking.
*
* source: https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/main/activesupport/lib/active_support/inflections.rb
**/
class Inflector
{
private static $irregulars = [
"person" => "people",
"man" => "men",
"child" => "children",
"sex" => "sexes",
"move" => "moves",
"zombie" => "zombies",
];
private static $uncountables = [
'equipment' => true,
'information' => true,
'rice' => true,
'money' => true,
'species' => true,
'series' => true,
'fish' => true,
'sheep' => true,
'jeans' => true,
'police' => true,
];
private static $plurals = [
'/$/' => "s",
'/s$/i' => "s",
'/^(ax|test)is$/i' => '\1es',
'/(octop|vir)us$/i' => '\1i',
'/(octop|vir)i$/i' => '\1i',
'/(alias|status)$/i' => '\1es',
'/(bu)s$/i' => '\1ses',
'/(buffal|tomat)o$/i' => '\1oes',
'/([ti])um$/i' => '\1a',
'/([ti])a$/i' => '\1a',
'/sis$/i' => "ses",
'/(?:([^f])fe|([lr])f)$/i' => '\1\2ves',
'/(hive)$/i' => '\1s',
'/([^aeiouy]|qu)y$/i' => '\1ies',
'/(x|ch|ss|sh)$/i' => '\1es',
'/(matr|vert|ind)(?:ix|ex)$/i' => '\1ices',
'/^(m|l)ouse$/i' => '\1ice',
'/^(m|l)ice$/i' => '\1ice',
'/^(ox)$/i' => '\1en',
'/^(oxen)$/i' => '\1',
'/(quiz)$/i' => '\1zes',
];
private static $singulars = [
'/s$/i' => "",
'/(ss)$/i' => '\1',
'/(n)ews$/i' => '\1ews',
'/([ti])a$/i' => '\1um',
'/((a)naly|(b)a|(d)iagno|(p)arenthe|(p)rogno|(s)ynop|(t)he)(sis|ses)$/i' => '\1sis',
'/(^analy)(sis|ses)$/i' => '\1sis',
'/([^f])ves$/i' => '\1fe',
'/(hive)s$/i' => '\1',
'/(tive)s$/i' => '\1',
'/([lr])ves$/i' => '\1f',
'/([^aeiouy]|qu)ies$/i' => '\1y',
'/(s)eries$/i' => '\1eries',
'/(m)ovies$/i' => '\1ovie',
'/(x|ch|ss|sh)es$/i' => '\1',
'/^(m|l)ice$/i' => '\1ouse',
'/(bus)(es)?$/i' => '\1',
'/(o)es$/i' => '\1',
'/(shoe)s$/i' => '\1',
'/(cris|test)(is|es)$/i' => '\1is',
'/^(a)x[ie]s$/i' => '\1xis',
'/(octop|vir)(us|i)$/i' => '\1us',
'/(alias|status)(es)?$/i' => '\1',
'/^(ox)en/i' => '\1',
'/(vert|ind)ices$/i' => '\1ex',
'/(matr)ices$/i' => '\1ix',
'/(quiz)zes$/i' => '\1',
'/(database)s$/i' => '\1',
];
public static function singularize(string $plural): string
{
if (isset(static::$uncountables[$plural])) {
return $plural;
}
$irregulars = array_flip(static::$irregulars);
foreach ($irregulars as $pattern => $replacement) {
if (preg_match("/$pattern\$/",$plural)) {
return preg_replace("/$pattern\$/",$replacement,$plural);
}
}
foreach (array_reverse(static::$singulars, true) as $pattern => $replacement) {
if (preg_match($pattern,$plural)) {
return preg_replace($pattern,$replacement,$plural);
}
}
return $plural;
}
public static function pluralize(string $singular): string
{
if (isset(static::$uncountables[$singular])) {
return $singular;
}
foreach (static::$irregulars as $pattern => $replacement) {
if (preg_match("/$pattern\$/",$singular)) {
return preg_replace("/$pattern\$/",$replacement,$singular);
}
}
foreach (array_reverse(static::$plurals, true) as $pattern => $replacement) {
if (preg_match($pattern,$singular)) {
return preg_replace($pattern,$replacement,$singular);
}
}
return $singular;
}
}
With the above code loaded you can call:
$singular = Inflector::singularize($plural);
As you can see the code is not really complicated and it is just executed a clever set of regular expressions executed in a loop. With this start you should be able to implement your own Inflector (in any programming language) or start making rules for a specific (natural) language for one of the existing Inflector implementations.
Happy coding!
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