Create Short URLs with PHP: shorten_url PHP Function

Do you want to create short urls from within your own PHP application? Most url shortening services provide an API, it’s how apps like twitter clients provide built-in url shortening. I wrote a small PHP function to provide url shortening from two of the most popular services, is.gd and tinyurl.com. Where’s bit.ly I hear you ask. Well yeah, sure, that’s what all the cool kids are using these days, but bit.ly requires an API key. That’s not a huge issue, it’s free. It just doesn’t sit well with creating a nice portable, drop in a go PHP function. So bit.ly didn’t get an invite to my super mega PHP function party.

If you want to get some bit.ly action on the go then feel free to modify the code below accordingly. I might update this at some point. I keep thinking I should, but meh.

function shorten_url($url,$service='tinyurl.com') {

	// create the request url based on the selected shortening service
	switch ($service) {
	    case 'tinyurl.com':
	       $service_url = 'http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url='.urlencode($url);
		   break;
	    case 'is.gd':
	        $service_url = 'http://is.gd/api.php?longurl='.urlencode($url);
	}

	/*
	 * use cURL to fetch the respons
	 * Feel free to swap this out for
	 * $output = file_get_contents($service_url)
	 * if you have fopen wrappers enabled
	 */
	$ch = curl_init($service_url);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
	$output = curl_exec($ch);
	curl_close($ch);

	// return false on error
	return strtolower(substr($output,0,5))=='error' ? false : $output;

}

The function defaults to tinyurl. Yeah. Interesting choice you’re thinking, but I’m old school and that’s how I roll. I’ve used curl to make the HTTP requests for the simple fact that when it comes to hosting curl support is enabled more ofthen than fopen wrappers is on (and you need fopen wrappers on to be able to do a file_get_contents on an url). Either way the result is the same. Use whichever method you like.