Convert Javascript UTF-8 to ASCII (like Iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $string) in PHP)

Question

I'm wondering how it's possible to 'translate' characters in UTF-8 to the closest ASCII equivalent using Javascript, just like Iconv doest in PHP.

Example:

ü becomes u
ó becomes o

I'd rather not use a replace, because a) it requires a complete set of characters, which is a lot of work and b) i'd would be hard to get a complete set of characters, and i'll never be certain if i'm missing one or two.

Answer 1

The easiest way I've found:

var str = "üó";
var combining = /[\u0300-\u036F]/g; 

console.log(str.normalize('NFKD').replace(combining, ''));

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/String/normalize

Answer 2

As @Pointy said, your only option is to map/replace characters according to a dictionary.

You'll find this really useful: https://github.com/backbone-paginator/backbone.paginator/blob/a579796a30e583c4dfa09e0a86e4abd21e0b5b56/plugins/diacritic.js

Answer 3

There is now a port of iconv to JS: https://www.npmjs.com/package/iconv

var iconv = new Iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT//IGNORE');
iconv.convert('ça va が'); // "ca va "