ProjectArea51 URL Shortener

This is our short url/memo service which runs at a51.li.

Please note: This service is not publically available due to spam reasons.

An earlier incarnation got hacked by spammers so for the last few years this service has been locked down.

Please do not ask for access to this service as you'll almost certainly be declined. These instructions are here just incase I do allow external access to this service.

Calling the service

Access to any of the endpoints on this service requires an Authorization request header included with the API key included.

curl -H 'Authorization: {{key}}' http://api.area51.onl/shorturl/{{endpoint}}

Generating a unique ID

The genid endpoint generates a unique ID used by the service. This ID is unique so one generated by this endpoint will never be reused by another part of the service.

$ curl -H 'Authorization: {{key}}' http://api.area51.onl/shorturl/genid
"nUarQuLd"

Generating a short URL

This endpoint generates a short URL and makes it available on a51.li.

To use you need to make a http POST request with the request body containing a JSON object with one key url which contains the url to shorten.

$curl -H 'Authorization: {{key}}' -d '{"url":"{{url}}"}' http://api.area51.onl/shorturl/shorten
{"surl":"http://a51.li/nUarQuLd","token":"nUarQuLd","dest":"http://maidstoneweather.com/","type":"link"}

The returned JSON object describes the details of that URL

Key	Value
dest	The destination URL
surl	The shortened URL
token	The generated ID used in the shortened URL
type	Always link for results from this endpoint

Recipes

Shorten a url within a bash script

For this to work you need jq installed, e.g.

sudo apt-get install jq

This recipe will shorten a URL from within a bash script:

$ URL='http://area51.onl/'
$ SURL=$(curl -s -H 'Authorization: {{key}}' \
    -d "{\"url\":\"$URL\"}" \
    http://api.area51.onl/shorturl/shorten |\
     jq -r 'select(.surl!=null)|.surl')
$ echo $SURL
http://a51.li/nUafcFpK

The bash variable SURL will either contain a url or be empty if there was a failure.