Category: Web Development

Below is the code on how to make use of bitly API but first things first. In order to use the code below, you must create an account in bitly to gain your login and API Key which are both required in the API call. Once you have that setup, copy and paste the code below and you’re ready to get rollin’.

function makeBitlyUrl($url, $login, $apiKey, $format = 'xml', $version = '2.0.1')
{
	//First, you need to create the URL
	$bitly = 'http://api.bit.ly/shorten?version='.$version.'&longUrl='.urlencode($url).'&login='.$login.'&apiKey='.$apiKey.'&format='.$format;
	
	//Then, get the return data from the API call
	$response = file_get_contents($bitly);
	
	//Parse data depending on your preferred format
	if( strtolower( $format ) == 'json' )
	{
		$json = @json_decode($response,true);
		return $json['results'][$url]['shortUrl'];
	}
	else //Default is XML
	{
		$xml = simplexml_load_string($response);
		return 'http://bit.ly/'.$xml->results->nodeKeyVal->hash;
	}
}

$shortenedUrl = makeBitlyUrl('https://example.com', 'winnie', 'R_123456789abcde', 'json');

Oftentimes, file_get_contents() function comes really handy when we are trying to pull data from an API. We can simply do it by doing this:

$json_data = file_get_contents('http://theurl.com/api/json');

But what if the API requires authentication? Then, you’ll need a way to communicate with the authenticated server or else the server will give you this response.

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.yourdomain.com/file.php): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! 
HTTP/1.1 401 Authorization Required in file.php on line 7

In order to avoid that, first we need a way to add the username and password to the HTTP header in the request. We can simply use the stream_context_create() function.

Next is to use that stream context in the file_get_contents() function as the third parameter. As for the second parameter, just simply use false or 0 to skip it.

$username = 'theusername';
$password = 'thepassword';

$context = stream_context_create(array(
  'http' => array(
    'header' => "Authorization: Basic " . base64_encode("$username:$password")
  )
));

$json_data = file_get_contents('https://theurl.com/api/json', false, $context);

http://www.hashbangcode.com/blog/using-authentication-and-filegetcontents