Chapter 2. A URL Shortener

There are quite a few URL shorteners out there on the Internet; however, there's always room for a little fun and sometimes people or companies require their own solutions rather than just using an external provider. The project in this chapter covers just that—developing a URL shortener in CodeIgniter that can be used by anyone.

To make this app, we'll need to do a few things: we'll create two controllers, one to create a shortened URL and one to redirect a shortened URL to its actual location on the Web.

We'll create language files to store text, creating a foundation for multiple language support should you wish to implement it.

We will also make amends to the config/routes.php file—this is to ensure that the shortened URL is as short as it can be.

However, this app, along with all the others in this book, relies on the basic setup we did in Chapter 1, Introduction and Shared Project Resources; although you can take large sections of the code and drop it into pretty much any app you may already have, bear in mind that the setup we did in Chapter 1, Introduction and Shared Project Resources, acts as a foundation for this chapter.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

So without further ado, let's get on with it.