Developer API
Registering for an API Key
As before, an API key is required for requests to be processed by the system. Once a user registers, an API key is automatically generated for this user. The API key must attached to request via the api parameter (see full example below).
Sending a request for shortening a URL
To send a request, you should use the following format where the variables api and url are required, and if you want to request a custom alias, simply add &custom= at the end (see full example below).
GET http://al.ly/api?api=APIKEY&url=THELONGURLTOBESHORTENED&custom=CUSTOMALIAS
Server response
As before, the response will encoded in JSON format (default). This is done to facilitate cross-language usage. The first element of the response will always tell if an error has occurred (error: 1) or not (error: 0). The second element will change with respect to the first element. If there is an error, the second element will be named “msg”. which contains the source of error, otherwise it will be named “short” which contains the short URL. (See below for an example)
// No errors
{
"error":0,
"short":"http:\/\/al.ly\/DkZOb"
}
// An error has occurred
{
"error":1,
"msg":"Please enter a valid email"
}
Using plain text format
You can now request the response to be in plain text by just adding &format=text at the end of your request. This will return just http://al.ly/DkZOb instead of the JSON response. Note that if an error occurs, it will not output anything (see full example below).
GET http://al.ly/api?api=APIKEY&url=THELONGURLTOBESHORTENED&custom=CUSTOMALIAS&format=text
Using the API in PHP
To use the API in your PHP application, you have to send a GET request through file_get_contents or cURL: Both are reliable methods. You can see a sample code below using file_get_contents
// Using JSON Response
$api_url="http://al.ly/api?api=APIKEY&url=THELONGURLTOBESHORTENED&custom=CUSTOMALIAS";
$res= @json_decode(file_get_contents($api_url),TRUE);
if($res["error"]){
echo $res["msg"];
}else{
echo $res["short"];
}
// Using Plain Text Response
$api_url="http://al.ly/api?api=APIKEY&url=THELONGURLTOBESHORTENED&custom=CUSTOMALIAS&format=text";
$res= @file_get_contents($api_url);
if($res){
echo $res;
}
?>