Create a TinyURL with PHP
TinyURL is an awesome service. For those who don't know what TinyURL is, TinyURL allows you to take a long URL like "https://davidwalsh.name/jquery-link-nudging" and turn it into "http://tinyurl.com/67c4se". Using the PHP and TinyURL API, you can create these tiny URLs on the fly!
The PHP
//gets the data from a URL
function get_tiny_url($url) {
$ch = curl_init();
$timeout = 5;
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,'http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url='.$url);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,$timeout);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $data;
}
//test it out!
$new_url = get_tiny_url('https://davidwalsh.name/php-imdb-information-grabber');
//returns http://tinyurl.com/65gqpp
echo $new_url
Simply provide the URL and you'll received the new, tiny URL in return. If you use Twitter, you'll have noticed that Twitter automates tiny URL creation for URLs in tweets.
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David, great post as always. you are starting to get me creeped out, because I was thinking about something like this yesterday. and now I dont have to reinvent the wheel.
amazing!
Thanks a lot for this trick. It is very usable.
Seems you can even use is.gd in much the same way http://is.gd/api.php?longurl=
Link to the API info. http://is.gd/api_info.php
I like is.gd a bit more than tinyurl because the urls are smaller.
use
file_get_contents:<?php function tinyurl($url) { return file_get_contents('http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url='.$url); } ?>I’m so confused
I tested it out on my site and it works great.
But where is it getting the $url from?
Why not use this
Sry…
<?php function tiny_url($url){ return file_get_contents('http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=' . $url); } $url = 'http://www.url.com/'; echo tiny_url($url); ?>thank you
Clear, fast and easy.Thank you :)
Hey David! I’ve just release an API for to.ly:
PHP Code sample:
function CompressURL($url) {
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, “http://to.ly/api.php?longurl=”.urlencode($url));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
$html = curl_exec ($ch);
curl_close ($ch);
return $html;
}
echo CompressURL(“http://twitter.com”); // Test
hai alll….thanks for the tricksss…. if i use daniel’s sample….my page take a bit long to load….. hmmm any other way to prevent this???
thanksss
Thank you, I used it!
it worked out of the box!
next improvement – tinyurl lets us “customize” the url with an optional alias – think we can add this somehow?
@Daniel: It works fine. But when the server has diabled the file_get_contents() it will create problems. I had the same problem. But when i used cURL() it worked fine.
Hello Thanks for the tip. Tinyurl is very usable , it doesnt need a api key, bit.ly needs one so i use tinyurl ;-)
Nice job man. tks
I tried using it on my local host…
but it doesnt seem’s to be working… and yes im connected to the internet… it gives error with the
curl_init();
………
Did you find a solution to this ? I am running into the same problem. I think we need to include the tiny url api library. I am not sure.
This works great.
Here is short URL which i recommend you all: http://go.af , its called go air force.
hi fellows
first of all this is a great post, and i will include this to my website, but there’s a little problem this function only works with an url with the next format “http://www.xxx.com” and with this kind of one “http://www.xxx.com/xxx.php”, what do you suggest me to solve this!
i summon all the internet gurus!!!
It’s useful for me! thx~~
Nice job, Dave.
It works as a charm.
Did you notice TinyURL re-assigns the same short-url on duplicate URLs? (which is the behaviour I needed, indeed!)
Works really nice, Thanks…
I’m combining this with the Google QR Code API to generate qr images for a shopping cart I am developing for a school project…
Total noob question, but where does the code go exactly? Above every php file?
liz –
you can simply copy/paste this block of code inside of the
and it should work right out of the box. just cut-paste the example URL to whatever you want.
be sure to check out his php-IMAP interface too – its pretty awesome!
Awesome! It really works…. so cool! Thanks, and I most certainly will. XD
thank you so much!
had a problem with the file_get_content…
this works great!
The $url is an argument that you define when you call the function.
oh devid you are my life saviour..
Thanks.
I was testing it, and it seems that just a query string is enough to generate a tiny url.
http://tinyurl.com/create.php?source=indexpage&url=http%3A%2F%2Femailhider.com%2Fremailer.php%3Fadd%3Demail%26dom%3Dmydomain%26ext%3Dcom&submit=Make+TinyURL%21&alias=
This is a method I am playing with to hide email addresses from spambots…
Your script is quite cool though… as this thread shows, there are about 1000 ways to solve a problem and it’s often a matter of personal preference as to how to do it.
I’ll post a link back when I get the PHP email hider script working… :)
Write your own shorting code with a 302 redirect not 301 like tinyurl so you get the pagerank benefits
Hmm it seems like your website ate my first comment (it was extremely long)
so I guess I’ll just sum it up what I submitted and say,
I’m thoroughly enjoying your blog. I too am an aspiring blog writer
but I’m still new to the whole thing. Do you have any helpful hints
for novice blog writers? I’d certainly appreciate it.
Hi, i got a problem on this tiny url example. At first it was generated to short url to me, but after i had tried on around hundred times in 1 day cause i’m testing on my development, it was not function after that. It return back blank data to me. So after few days, i tried again it is working fine. I’m wondering what is the problem on this? Is it have any quota on tinyurl or tinyurl website server down itself cause my problem ??
Thanks man its working fine …..
Oddly this wont work, is there a delay on tinyurl return that could be causing timeout?
The code is working fine. But my doubt was is there any limit for creating URL?
Hello there,
I am using the tiny url. I put the same code mentioned above but when i echo the url it print blank. Need solution on same
The tiny website doesn’t show a limit for creating short urls on the free plan. If you are unable to use this file get contents method then use curl.
Interestingly there is a formal rest ful api that does require authentication. Not sure if there any advantage to this for creating simple short urls compared to the method outlined in this blog.
Tiny says their free service is ad supported. Where are the ads ??