Usage

Check a piece of text

Profanity::containsProfanity returns true or false:

use NoNepaliProfanity\Profanity;

Profanity::containsProfanity('Great teacher!');   // false
Profanity::containsProfanity('muji');             // true
Profanity::containsProfanity('मुजीको क्लास');      // true (Devanagari with a postposition)
Profanity::containsProfanity('sh!t lecturer');    // true (! used as i)

Find out what matched

Profanity::findProfanity returns the words that matched. Use it to show a moderator why something was flagged, or to log it:

Profanity::findProfanity('f.u.c.k this sh1t');     // ['fuck', 'shit']
Profanity::findProfanity('what the f*ck, sh*t');   // ['f*ck', 'sh*t']
Profanity::findProfanity('Muji muji MUJI');        // ['muji'] (duplicates removed)
Profanity::findProfanity('Shitij Adhikari');       // []

The results are normalized: lowercased, with leetspeak decoded. They aren't the exact text the user typed. See findProfanity for the details.

Censor text

Profanity::censor masks every match and leaves the rest of the text alone:

Profanity::censor('you muji');                  // 'you ****'
Profanity::censor('F.U.C.K this Sh1t!');        // '******* this ****!'
Profanity::censor('you muji', ['mask' => '#']); // 'you ####'

Check and censor in one pass

Profanity::check scans the text once and returns a result you can inspect and then censor. It's the way to chain the two:

$result = Profanity::check('you muji');

if ($result->hasProfanity) {
    error_log(implode(', ', $result->words)); // muji
}
$result->censor();                           // 'you ****'
Profanity::check('you muji')->censor();      // 'you ****'

See Censoring for masks, custom replacements and what exactly gets masked.

Choose which languages to check

By default, all three languages are checked. Pass languages to check only some of them:

// Only Romanized Nepali
Profanity::containsProfanity('fuck', ['languages' => ['romanized']]);   // false
Profanity::containsProfanity('muji', ['languages' => ['romanized']]);   // true

// Nepali in both scripts, but not English
Profanity::findProfanity('fuck muji मुजी', ['languages' => ['romanized', 'devanagari']]);   // ['muji', 'मुजी']

Language	Covers
'english'	English profanity and insults.
'romanized'	Nepali written in Latin letters, plus Hindi slang common in Nepal.
'devanagari'	Nepali written in Devanagari.

Choose how strict to be

strictness sets how much is caught. The default is 'standard'.

Strictness	Catches	Use it for
'lenient'	Severe profanity and slurs only.	Casual communities where mild insults are fine.
'standard'	The above, plus milder insults like idiot, murkha and sala.	Most sites.
'strict'	The above, plus word stems that also match ordinary words and names.	Moderation queues reviewed by a person.

Profanity::containsProfanity('you idiot', ['strictness' => 'lenient']);         // false
Profanity::containsProfanity('you idiot');                                      // true

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

WARNING

'strict' still flags a few ordinary words, like damn and prick. Names and words its stems would hit, like Randip and conditions, are on a built-in allow list.

Reuse a filter

If you check a lot of text with the same options, create a filter once and reuse it:

$filter = Profanity::createFilter(['languages' => ['romanized', 'devanagari'], 'strictness' => 'lenient']);

$filter->containsProfanity('muji');    // true
$filter->findProfanity('fuck muji');   // ['muji']

createFilter checks the options once and throws an InvalidArgumentException if they're invalid, which surfaces mistakes when your app starts rather than on the first request. The static methods also cache a filter for each set of options, so passing options on every call is still fast.

Debug a match

If a word is flagged or missed unexpectedly, Profanity::tokenize shows the words the filter actually checked:

Profanity::tokenize('Great teacher!');   // ['great', 'teacher']
Profanity::tokenize('f*ck this!');       // ['f*ck', 'this']
Profanity::tokenize('m u j i ko');       // ['muji', 'ko']

How matching works explains each step.