Making a link shortner
2015-10-26
My first thought when I got the following message
Also, do you know how to make a URL shortner?
was yes, probably, all things considered. The last two days I'm been working on it, and it's turned out semi-well. There's a bug or two that needs fixing, but I figured I could post a short tutorial on how to do a simple one.
Right, I'm assuming a few things:
- [You have a web server]{#6644}
- [You have a short domain/subdomain]{#0b99}
- [You have MySQL & PhpMyAdmin]{#f238}
- [You know how to use PHP]{#91de}
With that out of the way, let's set up our MySQL database. You'll need a table called links, in which it should have the columns laid out like so:
links:
- actual [text]
- short [text] (no other special values are required)
Now, in our file named shorten.php (which you should download here, we need to edit a few things, first, make sure you change the PDO to connect to your database. Also, change
$b = generate_random_letters(5);
to be any length you'd like. Lastly, make sure
value="url.com
is the domain or subdomain of your site.
Great! Now that we can create short links, we need to interpret them. In long.php (link), change the first
header('Location: url.com');
to redirect to your main website. This will redirect users to the main website if there is no short link.
Fantastic, you're all done! As a bonus though, you can use a .htaccess file to tidy up your URL.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/?$ long.php?short=$1 [NC,L]
So instead of http://url.com/long.php?short=efkea, it will be http://url.com/efkea.
That's all for today :)