Use bit.ly from the command line (and browser!) with no frills

Yeah, so I loathe the bit.ly redesign. I want a simple url shortener, that at least has an option without flash, or bundles, or doozits.

So here’s to do it, crossplatform (mostly) with a tiny bit of hacking.

DEPENDENCIES:

• Bit.ly Account, and your API key (get it here)

EITHER:

• CURL (and nothing else)
• Python and A copy of this python script 

OPTIONAL:

• a clipboard manager, such as xsel (*nix), clip (Windows), pbcopy (osX)
• Applauncher – Firefox addon

Your actual script to call all of this will vary somewhat by operating system.

With CURL, here’s how for

Windows:

Unix (and for that matter, other than using a different clipboard manager, it should about the same for OSX)

The python version is pretty similar – edit the python script to put your username and API key in that file, then call it like this with a separate script (note the editing needed for windows folks…)

The beauty comes with something like Applauncher. Install, and configure your external application like this:

NAME: bit.ly
PATH: Put the full filename to bashbitly or cmdbitly.bat as applies.
ARGUMENTS: &url;

It will then take whatever the current url is, and shorten it, and paste it back to the clipboard!

As I note in the comments for the scripts above, I don’t have a windows machine running right now, so if you find errors, comment below! (Also, try messing with the %1 bits; that’s probably where it’s going wrong.)