Google Releases API For Goo.gl URL Shortener

Some good news for developers and coders who use Google’s URL shortening service and always wanted a Goo.gl API for their web applications.

Google has recently released an API for Goo.gl which allows users to integrate Google’s URL shortener in their web applications, blogs or websites. You can use simple HTTP methods to create, inspect, and manage goo.gl short URLs from desktop, mobile, or web application.

Google’s URL shortening service is one of the fastest URL shortners out there. The only near competitor of Goo.gl is Bit.ly, which also provides analytics for the shortened URL’s apart from providing their own API to developers. It looks like Google wants to level the playing field in the URL shortening market by allowing coders and developers the ability to integrate Goo.gl URL shortening service in their products and apps.

Getting Started With Goo.gl API

The getting started page at Google code lists all the step by step details for developers who want to use Goo.gl in their web properties. First, you will need to get your API key from the console page, which is required to identify your application and pass different arguments or parameters. Here is how the API page looks like:

Scroll down to the bottom of the page, find the URL shortener API section and hit the “Activate” button. All done, you will be given a unique authentication URL as shown below:

After the authentication part is complete, you can head over to the Actions page and learn how to use Goo.gl URL shortener API and choose the different actions required by your application.

For development purposes, you can issue API calls without a developer key, but using a key will grant you much higher usage limits. The advantage of using Goo.gl API is that apart from shortening and expanding long URL’s within your application, you can also fetch history and analytics of the shortened URL’s. Common examples include auto shortening URL’s from a custom Twitter client, shortening the long link of your blog post – the possibilities are endless.

Do give Goo.gl API a try and let us know your ideas in the comments section. [via Google Code blog ]

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