Posts Tagged ‘TinyLink’

Posted on October 17, 2007 - by Justin Hartman

TinyLink gets a Public API

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After a lengthy discussion with Charl last night I got some inspiration and created a Public API for TinyLink. The API can be used through a REST or JSON request and if you’re a developer you can chose either to integrate into your application.

Charl has kindly created an example Python script and a PHP one will follow shortly.

I also spent some time and created an About page which highlights what the service is about as well as what’s on the TODO list.

Finally, I wanted to thank Dominique for doing the hard maths and working out that based on the current database structure TinyLink can hold a total of 2,176,782,336 urls. Calculators were needed!

I’m really not sure why but this project has got me very excited…

Posted on October 2, 2007 - by Justin Hartman

TinyLink - My latest clone

I’ve been a big fan of TinyURL! for some time now and I’ve been quite fascinated with how the whole thing is put together so after having a chat with Colin and Gregor on Friday about the whole architecture of TinyURL I decided to have a go and see what I could come up with. I’m pleased to say that it didn’t take altogether that long and by Sunday evening TinyLink went live.

The biggest challenge for me was structuring the database so that a shortened URL would never exceeding six characters and this took some figuring out but I’ve now got a structure that can handle, literally, a couple billion short URLs.

I also created some help files for IE7, Firefox and Safari which shows you how to add a TinyLink button to your browser so that you can easily convert a long URL into a short one with one simple click.

There is absolutely no commercial value in this, the logo is crap and I only did it to see if I could replicate this great service so please go easy on me…