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Google has had a URL shortening domain for quite a while now but it wasn't until recently that Google exposed the URL shortening API to the public. I took a few minutes to review their API and created a very basic GoogleUrlApi class that will shorten long URLs and expand shortened URLs.

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// Declare the class
class GoogleUrlApi {

  // Constructor
  function GoogleURLAPI($key,$apiURL = 'https://www.googleapis.com/urlshortener/v1/url') {
    // Keep the API Url
    $this->apiURL = $apiURL.'?key='.$key;
  }

  // Shorten a URL
  function shorten($url) {
    // Send information along
    $response = $this->send($url);
    // Return the result
    return isset($response['id']) ? $response['id'] : false;
  }

  // Expand a URL
  function expand($url) {
    // Send information along
    $response = $this->send($url,false);
    // Return the result
    return isset($response['longUrl']) ? $response['longUrl'] : false;
  }

  // Send information to Google
  function send($url,$shorten = true) {
    // Create cURL
    $ch = curl_init();
    // If we're shortening a URL...
    if($shorten) {
      curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,$this->apiURL);
      curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST,1);
      curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,json_encode(array("longUrl"=>$url)));
      curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER,array("Content-Type: application/json"));
    }
    else {
      curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,$this->apiURL.'&shortUrl='.$url);
    }
    curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
    // Execute the post
    $result = curl_exec($ch);
    // Close the connection
    curl_close($ch);
    // Return the result
    return json_decode($result,true);
  }
}

// Now let's create an instance of GoogleUrlApi to shorten and then expand a URL

// Create instance with key
$key = 'xhjkhzkhfuh38934hfsdajkjaf';
$googer = new GoogleURLAPI($key);

// Test: Shorten a URL
$shortDWName = $googer->shorten("http://davidwalsh.name");
echo $shortDWName; // returns http://goo.gl/i002

// Test: Expand a URL
$longDWName = $googer->expand($shortDWName);
echo $longDWName; // returns http://davidwalsh.name