API Introduction

shortText exposes its functionality of creating URLs or reteriving text of URLs via an Application Programming Interface (API). This help page provides reference of that API and how to use it.

CREATE URL

HTTP Method

shortText's API is based on the simple HTTP request and response method.
To create a URL for any text, send the text to:

http://shortText.com/api.aspx via the HTTP POST method.

Use the parameter shorttext for the text being sent.

If everything goes well, you will get a HTTP status code 200 and the generated URL as plain text.

Text limit

shortText only takes the first 30,000 characters of the text sent via the API. This is to prevent abuse.



FETCH URL TEXT

To prevent abuse, shortText.com requires a one time registration of your application to use this API method.

HTTP Method

shortText's API is based on the simple HTTP request and response method.
To fetch the text, send the URL with the parameter url to:

http://shortText.com/api.aspx via the HTTP POST method.

Also, you will need to send the application key. Send the key with the paramater appkey. To get an application key, you will have to register your application with shortText.com.

Example: If the shortText URL is http://shortText.com/myURL, a typical curl command would be:
curl -d "appkey=myAppKey&url=myURL" "http://shortText.com/api.aspx"

If everything goes well, you will get a response of HTTP status code 200 and the generated text.

Limitation

shortText only allows to fetch text for URLs which are public and do not have any password.



This is a beta feature. Please feel free to write to us at support@shortText.com for comments or suggestions.