Tutorial: http://nasir.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/url-shortener-gem-bitly-api-wrapper-in-ruby/

Url Shortener is a Ruby library / gem and API wrapper for bit.ly to shorten/expand the urls and retrieve other information about them.

To use the url_shortener gem you need a bit.ly login and Api key.

• If you are registered at bit.ly then you already have it.

• If you are not registered then you can get it easily by registering at bit.ly as they give an api key to every registered user

gem sources -a gemcutter.org

sudo gem install url_shortener

• Start an irb session

require ‘rubygems’ require ‘url_shortener’

authorize = UrlShortener::Authorize.new ‘your_bitly_login’, ‘your_bitly_api_key’

For example; authorize = UrlShortener::Authorize.new ‘bitlyapidemo’, ‘R_0da49e0a9118ff35f52f629d2d71bf07’

client = UrlShortener::Client.new authorize

shorten = client.shorten(‘www.yahoo.com’) # => UrlShortener::Response::Shorten object

shorten.result # => returns a hash of all data returned from bitly

shorten.urls # => Only returns the short urls look for more convenience methods in the UrlShortener::Response::Shorten class

OR

shorten = client.shorten(‘www.yahoo.com’, ‘www.google.com’, ‘github.com’)

shorten.result

shorten.urls

rdoc.info/projects/nas/url_shortener

Tests are written using RSpec and Cucumber. Integration tests use bit.ly demo login and api key credentials.

(The MIT License)

Copyright © 2009 Nasir Jamal

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the ‘Software’), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.