File: README — Documentation for too

TooShort

TooShort allows you to create persistent short URLs for your resources. And it works without any additional storage.

Creating a short URL

To create a short URL for one resource

In your model:

class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_a_short_url :host => 'http://2sh.de'
end

@foo.short_url # => http://2sh.de/2n9c

To create short URLs for multiple resources:

In an initializer file (config/initializer/too_short.rb):

TooShort.options[:host] = 'http://2sh.de'

In your models:

class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_a_short_url :scope => 'f'
end

class Bar < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_a_short_url :scope => 'b'
end

@foo.short_url # => http://2sh.de/f/2n9c
@bar.short_url # => http://2sh.de/b/2n9c

Expanding a short URL

Add routes:

get '/:scope/:hash' => 'short_urls#expand' # for multiple resources
get '/:hash' => 'short_urls#expand' # for a single resource

Create a new controller:

class ShortUrlController < ApplicationController
  include TooShort::ControllerMethods
end

The default behavior is

Valid URL -> redirect_to object
Invalid URL -> respond_to with error message

(see TooShort::ControllerMethods for details)

This can be overwritten by overwriting two methods

respond_to_valid_short_url
respond_to_invalid_short_url

The object that was looked up for the given short URL is stored in

@object_from_short_url

How the hashing is done:

@post = Post.create
@post.id        # => 123456
post.short_url  # => http://2sh.de/2n9c
123456.to_i(36) # => "2n9c"
"2n9c".to_s(36) # => 123456

I borrowed this from http://blog.saush.com/2009/04/13/clone-tinyurl-in-40-lines-of-ruby-code/

I go into more detail on the inner workings of TooShort here: sens3.com/posts/tooshort-rubygem

Contributing to too_short

Check out the latest master to make sure the feature hasn’t been implemented or the bug hasn’t been fixed yet
Check out the issue tracker to make sure someone already hasn’t requested it and/or contributed it
Fork the project
Start a feature/bugfix branch
Commit and push until you are happy with your contribution
Make sure to add tests for it. This is important so I don’t break it in a future version unintentionally.
Please try not to mess with the Rakefile, version, or history. If you want to have your own version, or is otherwise necessary, that is fine, but please isolate to its own commit so I can cherry-pick around it.

TooShort

Creating a short URL

Expanding a short URL

How the hashing is done:

Contributing to too_short

Copyright