Very good well informed ty you for the information. From the guys at http://bloggles.org...

I believe it is possible. There is only 1 way to find out and that’s to give it a try. Go their website (http://tinyurl.com/) and give it a shot. Another popular UR Shortening service is (http://bit.ly/)

//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(‘http://mbnusa.biz/articles.php?aid=68046caa4c-20091125123848&CatID=3&SubCatID=2′);

//returns http://tinyurl.com/65gqpp
echo $new_url

Of course, I am using this to add a tinyurl to a Twitter post notifying followers of a new article on my client’s website. So coupling this with Twitter’s totally simple API, I am able to do this!

Thanks for the article, it ultimately pointed me in the correct destination for my specific purposes!

Tim

I am having a small-ish problem with permissions. My client has a hosting account with 1and1.com (VPS). When I run your script, I am getting the following errors, which I assume have to do with server settings:

1. failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found
2. file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration

Any thoughts?
Cheers,
Tim

1. At present we sell a software online that generates an email. This email contains a link that consists of up to 100 characters (encrypted – order – email etc included in the string) that when clicked will direct to an installation page and carry through the encrypted data needed.

2. The problem we have is that a small number of people are not able to view the button (click here) that starts the automatic installation. The other problem is that a small number of people risk because of the string size not properly copy and paste the full licence key (installation URL)

3. What I am thinking is that “In Theory” we can convert the URL installation (which contains hash characters MD5 and dynamic data) into a Tiny URL. The alternate text for the button would then appear as the TinyURL and therefore those people not able to see the button will not view a lengthy (and sometimes scary string) instead seeing a friendly – short – TinyURL.

4. The end result is that then customers can copy and paste the Tiny URL (easier than previous URL) and then in a new browser easily start the installation process.

So the keywords here are “In Theory” and it would be appreciated if someone could give me feedback on whether integrating the TinyURL API would in fact create function TinyURL for our Installation URL’s

Thanks in advance…..

Hey so here is how you can accomplish this. Mind you this is a quick example and you should account for failures and invalid return values.

// Your function to get the current page URL.
function yourGetPageCurrentURL() {
return $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"] . $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
}

// My function to generate a Tiny URL.
function createTinyUrl($strURL) {
$tinyurl = file_get_contents(“http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=”.$strURL);
return $tinyurl;
}

$currentURL = yourGetPageCurrentURL();
echo(createTinyUrl($currentURL));

Hope this helps