Kebab Case Converter

What it does

kebab-case (dash-separated lowercase, named after how it looks like words skewered on a kebab stick) is one of the four main case conventions in programming: camelCase (first-word-lowercase, subsequent-capitalized: getUserName), PascalCase (all-words- capitalized: GetUserName), snake_case (under score-separated lowercase: get_user_name), and kebab-case (dash-separated lowercase: get-user-name). Each has its conventional domain. URLs and routing slugs use kebab-case (twitter.com/user-name, not /userName or /user_name) because dashes are URL-safe and improve readability. CSS properties use kebab-case (background-color, font-size). HTML attributes use kebab-case (data-user-id). File names in many projects use kebab-case for consistency.

The converter handles both directions: words/sentences/camelCase/snake_case → kebab- case, and kebab-case → space-separated words for human reading. The forward conversion handles edge cases that catch naive implementations: camelCase boundaries (split at lowercase-then-uppercase), consecutive-capitals (ParseHTMLDocument → parse-html-document, not parse-h-t-m-l- document), special characters (replace with dashes or strip based on slug-safe mode), unicode (transliterate accented characters: café → cafe), and consecutive-separators (multiple-spaces → single-dash). Reverse conversion is simpler — just split on dashes, capitalize first letter of each word.

Slug-safe mode (URL-friendly) goes further: strip non-alphanumeric characters entirely (keeps only letters, digits, and dashes), collapse multiple consecutive dashes, trim leading/trailing dashes, lowercase everything, transliterate accented or non-Latin characters where possible. Output is guaranteed safe for use in URLs, file names, and most database identifiers. For internationalized URLs, modern browsers accept Unicode-IDN slugs (e.g., café-paris) but compatibility varies — slug-safe ASCII remains the safer default.

How to use it

1. Paste your text or identifier into the input.
2. Pick direction: to-kebab-case (most common) or from-kebab-case-to-words.
3. Optionally enable slug-safe mode for URL-friendly output (strips special chars, normalizes Unicode).
4. Click Convert and copy the result.
5. For batch conversion of many strings, paste line-separated; tool processes each line.

When to use this tool

• Generating URL slugs from blog post titles or product names.
• Converting variable names between languages with different conventions (Java camelCase → CSS kebab-case).
• Naming files consistently in a project that uses kebab-case for filenames.
• Building URL-safe identifiers from arbitrary user-provided text.
• Refactoring code from one case convention to another.

When not to use it

• Languages or contexts where kebab-case isn't accepted — JavaScript variable names can't contain dashes (use camelCase or snake_case).
• Database column naming where snake_case is the SQL standard convention.
• Class names in most languages — those use PascalCase by convention.
• Strict-encoding identifiers (some legacy systems require alphanumeric only, no dashes).

Common use cases

• Quick conversion during a typical workday
• Pre-decision sanity-check on inputs and outputs
• Educational use — demonstrating the underlying concept
• Onboarding a colleague who needs the same calculation/conversion