FAQ

Can it replace bad words with ****?

Yes. Use Profanity::censor, or Profanity::check($text)->censor() if you also want to know what matched:

Profanity::censor('you muji');              // 'you ****'
Profanity::check('you muji')->censor();     // 'you ****'

See Censoring.

Can I highlight matches instead of hiding them?

Yes. Pass a replace callable to censor, or use the positions from findProfanityMatches:

Profanity::censor('you muji', ['replace' => fn ($m) => "<mark>{$m->text}</mark>"]);   // 'you <mark>muji</mark>'

Escape the rest of the text first if it goes into HTML. See Highlight matches for moderators.

Can I add my own words?

Yes. Pass extraWords to flag more words, and allowWords to never flag a word, such as a name on your site:

use NoNepaliProfanity\Profanity;

$filter = Profanity::createFilter(['extraWords' => ['someword'], 'allowWords' => ['somename']]);

$filter->containsProfanity('s0mew0rd');   // true

Extra words are matched like the built-in ones, so leetspeak, stretched letters and postpositions are still caught. To add words for everyone, see Contributing.

Why was this word flagged?

Run the text through findProfanity to see which word matched, and tokenize to see the words the filter checked:

Profanity::findProfanity('damn it', ['strictness' => 'strict']);   // ['damn']
Profanity::tokenize('damn it');                                    // ['damn', 'it']

If an ordinary word or a name is flagged at 'standard' or 'lenient', please report it.

Why wasn't this word caught?

It's probably not in the word lists, or it's in a stricter level than the one you use. Check the lexicon:

use NoNepaliProfanity\Lexicon;

array_values(array_filter(Lexicon::WORDS, fn ($e) => $e['text'] === 'idiot'));
// [['text' => 'idiot', 'language' => 'english', 'strictness' => 'standard']]

If it isn't there, suggest it.

Which strictness should I use?

Use the default, 'standard', for most sites. Use 'lenient' if mild insults are fine in your community. Use 'strict' only when a person reviews what gets flagged, because it catches a few ordinary words, like damn. See Block severe words, review the rest.

Does it work with Laravel, Symfony or WordPress?

Yes. It's plain PHP with no framework dependencies, so you can call it from a validation rule, a controller or a filter hook in any of them.

Is it fast?

Yes, for typical user text like comments, reviews and names. A filter builds its lookup tables once per request, and each check is a single pass over the words in the text. To both check and censor, use Profanity::check($text), which reuses one scan for both.

Does it give the same results as the JavaScript package?

Yes. Every port uses the same word lists and matching rules, and is tested against the JavaScript package's output. The one difference is how match positions are counted: in PHP, start and end count characters (code points), where JavaScript counts UTF-16 code units. Slice with mb_substr to get the matched text.