NAME

WWW::Shorten - Abstract interface to URL shortening sites.

SYNOPSIS

  use WWW::Shorten 'EkDk';
  use WWW::Shorten 'MakeAShorterLink';
  use WWW::Shorten 'Metamark';
  use WWW::Shorten 'NotLong';
  use WWW::Shorten 'Shorl';
  use WWW::Shorten 'ShortLink';
  use WWW::Shorten 'SmLnk';
  use WWW::Shorten 'SnipURL';
  use WWW::Shorten 'TinyClick';
  use WWW::Shorten 'TinyURL';

  # Individual modules have have their
  # own syntactic varations.

  # See the documentation for the particular
  # module you intend to use for details, trips
  # and traps.

  $short_url = makeashorterlink($long_url);

  $long_url  = makealongerlink($short_url);

  # If you don't like the function names:
  use WWW::Shorten 'SnipURL', ':short';
  $short_url = short_link( $long_url );
  $long_url = long_link( $short_url );

ABSTRACT

A Perl interface to URL shortening sites. These sites maintain databases of long URLs, each of which has a unique identifier.

DESCRIPTION

The function makeashorterlink will call the relevant web site passing it your long URL and will return the shorter version.

The function makealongerlink does the reverse. makealongerlink will accept as an argument either the full shortened URL or just the identifier.

If anything goes wrong, then either function will return undef.

EXPORT

makeashorterlink, makealongerlink

Or, if you specify :short on the import line, you instead get short_link and long_link. If you explicitly want the default set, use :default.

COMMAND LINE PROGRAM

A very simple program called shorten is supplied in the distribution's bin folder. This program takes a URL and gives you a shortened version of it.

SERVICES

  EkDk                http://add.redir.ek.dk/
  MakeAShorterLink    http://makeashorterlink.com/
  Metamark            http://xrl.us/
  NotLong             http://notlong.com/
  Shorl               http://shorl.com/
  ShortLink           http://shortlink.us/
  SmLnk               http://smlnk.org/
  SnipURL             http://snipurl.com/
  TinyClick           http://tinyclick.com/
  TinyURL             http://tinyurl.com/

See http://notlong.com/links/ for a comparison of most of them.

THANKS

Dave Cross for WWW::MakeAShorterLink

Alex Page for the original LWP hacking on which Dave based his code.

Simon Batistoni for giving the makealongerlink idea to Dave.

Eric Hammond for writing the NotLong variant.

Shashank Tripathi for providing both SnipURL.com and advice on the module.

Kevin Gilbertson (Gilby) supplied information on the TinyURL API interface.

Matt Felsen (mattf) wanted shorter function names.

Ask Bjoern Hansen for providing both Metamark.net and advice on the module.

Martin Thurn for helping me notice a bug and for a suggestion regarding MASL.pm.

And particularly thanks to all providers of these services.

BUGS, REQUESTS, COMMENTS

Please report any requests, suggestions or bugs via the system at http://rt.cpan.org/, or email <bug-WWW-Shorten@rt.cpan.org>. This makes it much easier for me to track things and thus means your problem is less likely to be neglected.

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

Copyright © Iain Truskett, 2002-2003. All rights reserved.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

AUTHOR

Iain Truskett <spoon@cpan.org>

Based on WWW::MakeAShorterLink by Dave Cross <dave@dave.org.uk>

SEE ALSO

perl

cpanm WWW::Shorten

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install WWW::Shorten