How to create bitly shortened url from user's inputed text? - php

Question

Begginer here, people. Could anybody suggest any kind of solution? I've an user inputed text.
First of all I check if the text has any urls:
$post = preg_replace('/https?:\/\/[\w\-\.!~?&+\*\'"(),\/]+/','<a class="post_link"
href="$0">$0</a>',$post);
And after that I need to retrieve that url and put as a variable($url) to this function:
$short=make_bitly_url('$url','o_6sgltp5sq4as','R_f5212f1asdads1cee780eed00d2f1bd2fd794f','xml');
And finally, echo both url and user's text. Thanks in advance for ideas and critiques.
I've tried something like that:
$post = preg_replace('/https?:\/\/[\w\-\.!~?&+\*\'"(),\/]+/e',$url,$post){
$shorten = make_bitly_url($url,'o_6sgltpmm5sq4','R_f5212f11cee780ekked00d2f1bd2fd794f','json');
return '<a class="post_link" href="$shorten">$shorten</a>';
};
But even for me it looks some kind of nonsense.

Answer 1

Bitly does have an API available for use. You should check out API Documentation

Answer 2

Here's how to use the bit.ly API from PHP:
/* make a URL small */
function make_bitly_url($url,$login,$appkey,$format = 'xml',$version = '2.0.1')
{
//create the URL
$bitly = 'http://api.bit.ly/shorten?version='.$version.'&longUrl='.urlencode($url).'&login='.$login.'&apiKey='.$appkey.'&format='.$format;
//get the url
//could also use cURL here
$response = file_get_contents($bitly);
//parse depending on desired format
if(strtolower($format) == 'json')
{
$json = #json_decode($response,true);
return $json['results'][$url]['shortUrl'];
}
else //xml
{
$xml = simplexml_load_string($response);
return 'http://bit.ly/'.$xml->results->nodeKeyVal->hash;
}
}
/* usage */
$short = make_bitly_url('http://davidwalsh.name','davidwalshblog','R_96acc320c5c423e4f5192e006ff24980','json');
echo 'The short URL is: '.$short;
// returns: http://bit.ly/11Owun
Source: David Walsh article
HOWEVER, if you wanted to create your own URL shortening system (similar to bit.ly -- and surprisingly easy to do), here is an 8-part tutorial from PHPacademy on how to do that:
Difficulty level: beginner / intermediate
Each video is approx ten minutes.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8