Bitly for iOS

URL Shortener using Bitly

What does it do and why?

The SSTURLShortener class included in this project uses the Bitly service to shorten URLs using a blocks interface in Objective-C. It makes it possible to quickly shorten any URL using this service which is especially helpful when sharing links via services like Twitter, Facebook, SMS and others where you want to keep the URL short. Another benefit is that Bitly provides analytics on click-throughs of shortened URLs. Additionally, you can use the free Bitly Pro service to use your own domain name. For SmallSharpTools (SST) which is at smallsharptools.com there is a shorter domain sstools.co which is used for sharing URLs on various platforms and to track click-throughs. For services like Twitter and SMS where messages have a hard limit a shortened URL makes room for the rest of the message. If the shortened URL is used without the additional path which identified the shortened URL it redirects to bit.ly by default but can go to any domain you choose.

How to Use

Everything is in a single class named SSTURLShortener which you can find in the Xcode project. You can copy the header and implementation file into your Xcode project and use directly. Alternatively you coudl use CocoaPods or Carthage which are explained below.

The SSTURLShortener class has a single static method which takes the original URL, username, API key and a completion block. The username and API key come from your Bitly account. (See Legacy API Key under Advanced Settings) If the same URL is shortened it may benefit from the return value already being cached as the request uses the NSURLRequestReturnCacheDataElseLoad caching policy.

Testing

The included tests require user defaults to be set with the necessary access configuration which can be set by running the demo app included in the project. The tests can also show you how to use the URL shortener and expander.

Sample Project

This project includes a working sample. You simply need to provide the original URL, username and API key from Bitly. After you use it the first time the values for username and API key will be stored as settings so you do not have to enter them every time. For your project you will likely use constants to provide the username and API key to the method to shorten the URL.

License

BitlyForiOS is available under the Apache 2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for more info.

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Brennan Stehling
SmallSharpTools
@smallsharptools (Twitter)