URL shortening is nothing new, it was originally made popular due to the 140 character limit of Twitter and the 160 character limit of SMS messages.
https://trimlink.site
https://trimlink.site has been a project of mine for sometime, it is a simple URL Shortener designed to be integrated into larger projects or just to be used to shorten long URL’s. I posted the project on reddit and reddit user spydas created a ZSH plugin for this.
I have modified this slightly to allow it to work on systems without xclip installed as not everyone runs X, I’m actually running OS X so xclip is out of the question.
To use TrimLink at the BASH prompt simply add the following to your .bashrc or .zshrc file in your home directory.
shorten() {
if echo $1 | grep http > /dev/null
then
if xclip &> /dev/null
then
curl -Gs "https://trimlink.site/shorten.php" -d "url=$1" | sed 's/<[^>]*>/\n/g' | sed 's/\s*//g' | xclip -selection clipboard
echo 'Shortened URL copied to clipboard'
else
echo " Install xclip to add clipboard support"
curl -Gs "https://trimlink.site/shorten.php" -d "url=$1" | sed 's/<[^>]*>/\n/g' | sed 's/\s*//g' | sed 's/n//'
fi
else
echo "Usage: shorten <url>"
exit
fi
}
Shortening a URL is now simple, just type shorten https://example.com
➜ ~ shorten https://example.com
Install xclip to add clipboard support
http://t5.i/ccd99nA warning will be shown if xclip is not installed, if you do not want to see this use the version below:
shorten() {
if echo $1 | grep http > /dev/null
then
if xclip &> /dev/null
then
curl -Gs "https://trimlink.site/shorten.php" -d "url=$1" | sed 's/<[^>]*>/\n/g' | sed 's/\s*//g' | xclip -selection clipboard
echo 'Shortened URL copied to clipboard'
else
curl -Gs "https://trimlink.site/shorten.php" -d "url=$1" | sed 's/<[^>]*>/\n/g' | sed 's/\s*//g' | sed 's/n//'
fi
else
echo "Usage: shorten <url>"
exit
fi
}
I hope this is found useful, if you have any issues or questions please leave a comment below.
This is awesome to see! Great job spedys!
neat. “pbcopy” can be used on macos in place of “xclip”. 🙂
Nice! Here’s a fully working version for OS X users.
"
shorten() {
if echo $1 | grep http > /dev/null
then
if echo | pbcopy &> /dev/null
then
curl -Gs "https://trimlink.site/shorten.php" -d "url=$1" | sed 's/< [^>]*>/\n/g' | sed 's/\s*//g' | sed 's/n//' | pbcopy
echo 'Shortened URL copied to clipboard'
else
echo " Install pbcopy to add clipboard support"
curl -Gs "https://trimlink.site/shorten.php" -d "url=$1" | sed 's/< [^>]*>/\n/g' | sed 's/\s*//g' | sed 's/n//'
fi
else
echo "Usage: shorten
exit
fi
}
I allowed myself just to add xsel -ob so it will be printed out on the terminal and should be immediately clickable in terminal .
Great idea!