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Owly API PHP Client Library - owly-api-php

A PHP Class to interface with the Owly API to generate short trackable URLs

Currently only supports the follow methods

  • shorten - Shorten a URL

Does NOT yet support POST methods

Based on the Zend Ow.ly URL helper by Maxime Parmentier maxime.parmentier@invokemedia.com

Report all bugs/features at https://github.com/invokemedia/owly-api-php

Version 1.0.0 Author Shih Oon Liong shihoon.liong@invokemedia.com Created 24/07/2012 Copyright Invoke Media / Biplane License http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php MIT

What is Ow.ly?

A URL Shortener service which is heavily used by Hootsuite.

Generating an API Key

Ow.ly is completely separated from HootSuite. The only thing that an API key can be associated with is a Twitter account.

In order to use this library you need to contact their team to get API Key: https://developer.hootsuite.com/docs/owly-api-reference

To generate an api key Log in to ow.ly using a twitter account then go to: http://ow.ly/user/{your_twitter_username}?t=apikey - this will auto-generate an API key that will be tied to the Twitter account.

Requirements

PHP 5 (5.3 ideally) PHP Curl extension

Usage

Currently the API methods that have been implemented in this class

  • url/shorten
$longUrl = 'http://www.github.com';
$owly = OwlyApi::factory(array('key' => 'Your Owly API Key'));
try {
	$url = $owly->shorten($longUrl);
} catch(Exception $e) {
	// Catch any API errors here
}

The class heavily utilizes exceptions to throw any errors it gets from the API. It is highly recommended to do a try-catch wrapper when using any of the methods.

Ow.ly API Documentation

Documentation of the actual REST-based API can be found in the url below http://ow.ly/api-docs

Tips & Best Practice

  1. Always cache/save the generated ow.ly URL on your end. Try to NOT generate the URL at every request as the service is not 100% reliable. Attempting to generate for the same URL over and over again can result in a HTTP ERROR 500.