I would stay away from external APIs over which you have no control. That will simply introduce a dependency into your application that is a potential point of failure, and could cost you money to use. CURL can do this quite nicely. Here’s how I did it in PHP: function unshorten_url($url) { $ch = curl_init($url); … Read more
1) To shorten the UUID, you can simply XOR the top half with the bottom (and repeat until it’s short enough for you). This will preserve the distribution characteristics. Like any solution that shortens the output, it will increase the possibility of collision due to the birthday paradox 2) XOR amounts to a trivial hash, … Read more
You could use Base64: string base64Guid = Convert.ToBase64String(Guid.NewGuid().ToByteArray()); That generates a string like E1HKfn68Pkms5zsZsvKONw==. Since a GUID is always 128 bits, you can omit the == that you know will always be present at the end and that will give you a 22 character string. This isn’t as short as YouTube though.
Wiki Is Your Friend Basically, a website with a shorter name is used as a place holder, such as bit.ly. Then, bit.ly generates a key for the user to provide, which is randomly generated to not repeat. With 35 character options and 8 or so values, do the math. That’s a lot of possible keys. … Read more
No, they don’t use files. When you click on a link like that, an HTTP request is send to their server with the full URL, like http://bit.ly/duSk8wK (links to this question). They read the path part (here duSk8wK), which maps to their database. In the database, they find a description (sometimes), your name (sometimes) and … Read more