I wanted an easy way to shorten my URLs through one of the URL-shorteners out there. I liked bit.ly, because it’s nice and short, has an easy to navigate web-interface (without a mouse) and I can use its magic with my terminal (cURL).
I also very much like TextExpander and after googling a bit, I ofcourse found an Applescript for TextExpander and Bit.ly. That link also shows how to set it up in TextExpander, very handy! The script does not however use your actual bit.ly account so you can keep track of the URLs you shorten. I tweaked it and made adjustments and it took hours and ofcourse, then I find this which is almost exactly what I had, except with URL-encoding (yummy). The only problem with that one was that I couldn’t get it to have the URLs show up in my recent history. The ‘history=1′ didn’t seem to work.
I tweaked some more and came up with something that completely does what I want. I use OmniWeb so I replaced the
with
set PageURL to address of active tab of browser 1
end tell
If you use safari, use
set PageURL to URL of front document
end tell
I’ve made this as readable as possible, the ‘¬’ do matter in Applescript.
set PageURL to address of active tab of browser 1
end tell
set login to "YOUR LOGIN"
set api_key to "YOUR API KEY"
set the EncodedURL to urlencode(PageURL) of me
set curlCMD to ¬
"curl --stderr /dev/null \"http://api.bit.ly/v3/shorten?format=txt&longUrl=" ¬
& EncodedURL & "&history=1&login=" & login ¬
& "&apiKey=" & api_key ¬
& "\""
-- Run the script and get the result:
set bitlyURL to (do shell script curlCMD)
return bitlyURL
on urlencode(theText)
set theTextEnc to ""
repeat with eachChar in characters of theText
set useChar to eachChar
set eachCharNum to ASCII number of eachChar
if eachCharNum = 32 then
set useChar to "+"
else if (eachCharNum ≠ 42) and (eachCharNum ≠ 95) ¬
and (eachCharNum < 45 or eachCharNum > 46) ¬
and (eachCharNum < 48 or eachCharNum > 57) ¬
and (eachCharNum < 65 or eachCharNum > 90) ¬
and (eachCharNum < 97 or eachCharNum > 122) then
set firstDig to round (eachCharNum / 16) rounding down
set secondDig to eachCharNum mod 16
if firstDig > 9 then
set aNum to firstDig + 55
set firstDig to ASCII character aNum
end if
if secondDig > 9 then
set aNum to secondDig + 55
set secondDig to ASCII character aNum
end if
set numHex to ("%" & (firstDig as string) ¬
& (secondDig as string)) as string
set useChar to numHex
end if
set theTextEnc to theTextEnc & useChar as string
end repeat
return theTextEnc
end urlencode
ETA (2010.09.30): bit.ly changed a few things so I changed the script above to reflect that
Unfortunately I’m experiencing difficulties when using german characters like “ö” “ä” “ü” “ß”
Great! Thanks for this. I’ve shoehorned it into a Quicksilver action for instant bit.ly action.
Nice :)
I used to use Quicksliver but it won’t run for more than 10 minutes in a row on my machine for some reason. It crashes within that time :/ I use LaunchBar now.
FYI: Quicksilver has been updated for 10.6 – working pretty well for me on Snow Leopard.
http://www.blacktree.com/ is currently up, Quicksilver menu links to tiennou’s 10.6 version (ß58). ‘More info’ doesn’t work though.
I made a twitter account @LoveQuicksilver to big up QS. Let me know if you ever want the bit.ly QS script.
thanks for this! I really want it to work but I’m having problems.
I get it to run a link through bit.ly and it DOES show up in my history…but, this is what textexpander throws back out:
http://snipplr.com/view/13743/bitly-urlshortening-script-for-textexpander-that-associates-urls-with-your-bitly-account/“: {“userHash”: “c3DWbN”, “hash”: “cHtXCy”, “shortUrl”: “http://bit.ly/c3DWbN”, “shortCNAMEUrl”: “http://bit.ly/c3DWbN”, “shortKeywordUrl”: “”}}, “statusCode”: “OK
any ideas? thanks in advance!
Hi,
Bit.ly changed a few things and I didn’t keep up ;)
Change:
into
That should make it work