creating unique page title slugs php

Question

I have a function for creating unique slug for a page title. It checks if the slug is available in the pages table then creates a unique slug by adding a '-int' accordingly. The function works fine for the first three entries eg for 'test slug' entered three time will create 'test-slug-1', 'test-slug-2' and 'test-slug-3'. Then after that I get an error "Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded" for the fourth entry. There should be some problem with the logic, can anyone help me find it please.Below is the code:

function createSlug($title, $table_name, $field_name) {

global $db_connect;

$slug = preg_replace("/-$/","",preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9]+/i', "-", strtolower($title)));

$counter = 1;

do{

  $query = "SELECT * FROM $table_name WHERE  $field_name  = '".$slug."'";
  $result = mysqli_query($db_connect, $query) or die(mysqli_error($db_connect));


  if(mysqli_num_rows($result) > 0){
      $count = strrchr($slug , "-"); 
      $count = str_replace("-", "", $count);
      if($count > 0){

          $length = count($count) + 1;
          $newSlug = str_replace(strrchr($slug , "-"), '',$slug);
          $slug = $newSlug.'-'.$length;

          $count++;

      }else{
          $slug = $slug.'-'.$counter;
      }  

  }

  $counter++; 
  $row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result);

}while(mysqli_num_rows($result) > 0);

return $slug;

}

Answer 1

Just use a single query to do all the heavy lifting for you...

$slug = preg_replace("/-$/","",preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9]+/i', "-", strtolower($title)));

$query = "SELECT COUNT(*) AS NumHits FROM $table_name WHERE  $field_name  LIKE '$slug%'";
$result = mysqli_query($db_connect, $query) or die(mysqli_error($db_connect));
$row = $result->fetch_assoc();
$numHits = $row['NumHits'];

return ($numHits > 0) ? ($slug . '-' . $numHits) : $slug;