4 ms·

Long URLs Please

71 points by bdfh42 18y ago

pmjordan 18y ago
I can understand the Firefox extension as being something laudable, sure. But an HTTP API? That seems kind of random, given that the URL shorteners work with 30x HTTP responses. I mean, you just need to request the short URL and read out the Location header of the 30x response. It seems... convoluted to go via an additional server.
- darraghcurran 18y ago
  Good point - what I've done is allow you to piggyback more than one lookup onto a single request. so the plugin will batch them in groups of 4. does that make sense?
  - pmjordan 18y ago
    Well, on the server you're still starting N requests based on my batch request. I guess combined with caching that can make sense, yes. Even so, I'd probably want to implement my own [1] when setting up my own web app for reliability/trust reasons, and because of same-origin restrictions on client-side scripting. (XHR does support not following redirects, but it's kind of pointless with same-origin policy) [1] I did exactly that for http://tweetoftheyear.com/ http://tweetoftheyear.com/ in clojure: (defn lookup-redirect [url] (try (let [response (http-client/url-do url "HEAD" {:follow-redirect false})] (when (#{301 302 303 307} (:return-code response)) (first (get (:header response) "Location")))) (catch java.lang.Throwable t nil)))
    - darraghcurran 18y ago
      I thought so, and I do cache everything nicely in memcache and db. Also it's hard or maybe even impossible? to reliably fetch arbitrary short url using javascript - exposing it as a simple json api makes this easy.
      - pmjordan 18y ago
        Yeah, it's only possible on the same hostname as the page you're on, which limits the usefulness and makes the server-side lookup necessary. The JSON solution will only work via a foreign host with a <script> tag as far as I know, which again is something of a trust issue.
    - darraghcurran 18y ago
      nice - I've been meaning to learn a bit of clojure. I hear your point on wanting to set up your own - and as you've shown it is easy to do.
zacharydanger 18y ago
Taking the fun out of Rickrolling since 2008.
trickjarrett 18y ago
There's also longurl.org - doing the same sort of thing.
- darraghcurran 18y ago
  Yep - looks very similar to what I've done, I hadn't seen it until a few days ago. We could do with even more similar services - to balance out the hundreds of url shrinking services.
Donald 18y ago
Or, when using communication mediums where length isn't an issue, you could courteously give your readers a decent url: http://decenturl.com/ http://decenturl.com/ e.g., http://news.ycombinator.decenturl.com/long-urls-please http://news.ycombinator.decenturl.com/long-urls-please And a tidbit for the sadistic: http://hugeurl.com/ http://hugeurl.com/
nirmal 18y ago
I've been using Twitter as part of my blog and have started replacing the href of links with the expanded link. So if you go to my blog or follow me on twitter the links look the same but if you hover on a link the status bar shows the end link. I do this on the server side, with Python code I mentioned http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=406608 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=406608 but it is possible to do it client side as well with something like http://remysharp.com/tinyurlapi http://remysharp.com/tinyurlapi
pclark 18y ago
great idea. Installed :)
imusicmash 18y ago
nice idea and thanks for including an API. sort of related, I wrote a Greasemonkey script to automatically create bit.ly urls as you type a Twitter Tweet. Does it on the fly. Uses the bit.ly API. Check it out at http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/39042 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/39042
- darraghcurran 18y ago
  Nice! twitter confuses me how it will convert your urls to tiny urls when you don't want to - but won't when you need it to.
  - imusicmash 18y ago
    yah.. I wrote it partly to take that ambiguity away.. also seemed a shame to take up some of your 140 characters with a long url, then only to see that Twitter compressed it for you in the saved Tweet, reminding you that you could have typed more :)
    - darraghcurran 18y ago
      on the typing more front words - have you seen tweetshrink? http://tweetshrink.com/ http://tweetshrink.com/ - it'll shorten words like later to l8r to save characters - http://tweetdeck.com http://tweetdeck.com have integrated it's api into their twitter client
- nirmal 18y ago
  I've been wanting to use this for a long time but Safari's version of Greasemonkey doesn't support the GM_xmlhttpRequest function anymore.
kwamenum86 18y ago
you can already use user-entered strings in tinyurl so i dont see the point of using them as an example
racerrick 18y ago
That's funny. I was just looking for this.
zack 18y ago
Thank you; installed.
meqif 18y ago
The Firefox plugin at addons.mozilla.org is messed up (I looked at the contents and found it's an html document). However, the "Benefit right away by installing the firefox plugin" link has a working xpi. Just a heads-up for anyone wondering why they can't install the plugin. :-) EDIT: Oh, and the statusbar icon is utterly pointless.

71 points by bdfh42 18y ago

I can understand the Firefox extension as being something laudable, sure. But an HTTP API? That seems kind of random, given that the URL shorteners work with 30x HTTP responses. I mean, you just need to request the short URL and read out the Location header of the 30x response. It seems... convoluted to go via an additional server.

darraghcurran 18y ago
Good point - what I've done is allow you to piggyback more than one lookup onto a single request. so the plugin will batch them in groups of 4. does that make sense?
- pmjordan 18y ago
  Well, on the server you're still starting N requests based on my batch request. I guess combined with caching that can make sense, yes. Even so, I'd probably want to implement my own [1] when setting up my own web app for reliability/trust reasons, and because of same-origin restrictions on client-side scripting. (XHR does support not following redirects, but it's kind of pointless with same-origin policy) [1] I did exactly that for http://tweetoftheyear.com/ http://tweetoftheyear.com/ in clojure: (defn lookup-redirect [url] (try (let [response (http-client/url-do url "HEAD" {:follow-redirect false})] (when (#{301 302 303 307} (:return-code response)) (first (get (:header response) "Location")))) (catch java.lang.Throwable t nil)))
  - darraghcurran 18y ago
    I thought so, and I do cache everything nicely in memcache and db. Also it's hard or maybe even impossible? to reliably fetch arbitrary short url using javascript - exposing it as a simple json api makes this easy.
    - pmjordan 18y ago
      Yeah, it's only possible on the same hostname as the page you're on, which limits the usefulness and makes the server-side lookup necessary. The JSON solution will only work via a foreign host with a <script> tag as far as I know, which again is something of a trust issue.
  - darraghcurran 18y ago
    nice - I've been meaning to learn a bit of clojure. I hear your point on wanting to set up your own - and as you've shown it is easy to do.

zacharydanger 18y ago

Taking the fun out of Rickrolling since 2008.

trickjarrett 18y ago

There's also longurl.org - doing the same sort of thing.

darraghcurran 18y ago
Yep - looks very similar to what I've done, I hadn't seen it until a few days ago. We could do with even more similar services - to balance out the hundreds of url shrinking services.

Donald 18y ago

Or, when using communication mediums where length isn't an issue, you could courteously give your readers a decent url: http://decenturl.com/ http://decenturl.com/ e.g., http://news.ycombinator.decenturl.com/long-urls-please http://news.ycombinator.decenturl.com/long-urls-please And a tidbit for the sadistic: http://hugeurl.com/ http://hugeurl.com/

nirmal 18y ago

I've been using Twitter as part of my blog and have started replacing the href of links with the expanded link. So if you go to my blog or follow me on twitter the links look the same but if you hover on a link the status bar shows the end link. I do this on the server side, with Python code I mentioned http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=406608 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=406608 but it is possible to do it client side as well with something like http://remysharp.com/tinyurlapi http://remysharp.com/tinyurlapi

pclark 18y ago

great idea. Installed :)

imusicmash 18y ago

nice idea and thanks for including an API. sort of related, I wrote a Greasemonkey script to automatically create bit.ly urls as you type a Twitter Tweet. Does it on the fly. Uses the bit.ly API. Check it out at http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/39042 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/39042

darraghcurran 18y ago
Nice! twitter confuses me how it will convert your urls to tiny urls when you don't want to - but won't when you need it to.
- imusicmash 18y ago
  yah.. I wrote it partly to take that ambiguity away.. also seemed a shame to take up some of your 140 characters with a long url, then only to see that Twitter compressed it for you in the saved Tweet, reminding you that you could have typed more :)
  - darraghcurran 18y ago
    on the typing more front words - have you seen tweetshrink? http://tweetshrink.com/ http://tweetshrink.com/ - it'll shorten words like later to l8r to save characters - http://tweetdeck.com http://tweetdeck.com have integrated it's api into their twitter client
nirmal 18y ago
I've been wanting to use this for a long time but Safari's version of Greasemonkey doesn't support the GM_xmlhttpRequest function anymore.

kwamenum86 18y ago

you can already use user-entered strings in tinyurl so i dont see the point of using them as an example

racerrick 18y ago

That's funny. I was just looking for this.

zack 18y ago

Thank you; installed.

meqif 18y ago

The Firefox plugin at addons.mozilla.org is messed up (I looked at the contents and found it's an html document). However, the "Benefit right away by installing the firefox plugin" link has a working xpi. Just a heads-up for anyone wondering why they can't install the plugin. :-) EDIT: Oh, and the statusbar icon is utterly pointless.