Determine Final Destination of a Shortened URL in PHP?

Question

How can I do this in PHP? e.g.

bit.ly/f00b4r ==> http://www.google.com/search?q=cute+kittens

In Java, the solution is this:

You should issue a HEAD request to the url using a HttpWebRequest instance. In the returned HttpWebResponse, check the ResponseUri.

Just make sure the AllowAutoRedirect is set to true on the HttpWebRequest instance (it is true by default). (Thx, casperOne)

And the code is

private static string GetRealUrl(string url)
{
    WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(url);
    request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Http.Head;
    WebResponse response = request.GetResponse();
    return response.ResponseUri.ToString();
}

(Thx, Fredrik Mork)

But I want to do it in PHP. HOWTO? :)

do you need this for an specific shortener ? or you are just talking in general? many of the "good" shorteners can provide you the final destination when calling via API — Gabriel Sosa, Aug 23 '09 at 21:45
FYI: If you are trying to get http://t.co twitter urls to redirect they give a 200 response code so you have to grab the `` from the body. — Philip, Dec 24 '11 at 01:32

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 23 '09 at 21:46

The time to try, you already found the answer.

Still, I would have gone with something like this :

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://bit.ly/tqdUj");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOBODY, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
curl_exec($ch);

$url = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_EFFECTIVE_URL);

curl_close($ch);

var_dump($url);

Some explanations :

the requested URL is the short one
you don't want the headers
you want to make sure the body is not displayed -- probably useless
you do not want the body ; ie, you want a HEAD request, and not GET
you want locations to be followed, of course
once the request has been executed, you want to get the "real" URL that has been fetched

And, here, you get :

string 'http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-pubsubhubbub/' (length=52)

(Comes from one of the last tweets I saw that contained a short URL)

This should work with any shortening-URL service, independantly of their specific API.

You might also want to tweak some other options, like timeouts ; see curl_setopt for more informations.

I've tried a few things on t.co twitter links and this is the only thing that has worked for me so far. Thanks! +1 — Will Schoenberger, Aug 27 '14 at 19:04

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 23 '09 at 21:38

1

<?php
$url = 'http://www.example.com';

print_r(get_headers($url));

print_r(get_headers($url, 1));
?>

answered Aug 23 '09 at 21:38

Robert French

686
4
12

Parsing the Location header would probably work ; but what if there is tow (or more) levels of redirections ? (yeah, not what you generally see, but what if the destination site sets up some redirections the day they release a new version of the site ? ) – Pascal MARTIN Aug 23 '09 at 21:49

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 23 '09 at 21:39

1

Did you read the bit.ly API? specifically here ?

I can't see the issue. Are you talking about possible redirects ?

answered Aug 23 '09 at 21:39

Gabriel Sosa

7,897
4
38
48

If using a specific API, you will have to create a new specific code for each distinct shortening-URL service ; considering there are quite a bit of those, you will never stop coding and testing... some "generic" solution that work with any service would probably be easier, at least as a long term solution... – Pascal MARTIN Aug 23 '09 at 21:48

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 23 '09 at 21:37

CREDIT GOES TO http://forums.devshed.com/php-development-5/curl-get-final-url-after-inital-url-redirects-544144.html

function get_web_page( $url ) 
{ 
    $options = array( 
        CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,     // return web page 
        CURLOPT_HEADER         => true,    // return headers 
        CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,     // follow redirects 
        CURLOPT_ENCODING       => "",       // handle all encodings 
        CURLOPT_USERAGENT      => "spider", // who am i 
        CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER    => true,     // set referer on redirect 
        CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT => 120,      // timeout on connect 
        CURLOPT_TIMEOUT        => 120,      // timeout on response 
        CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS      => 10,       // stop after 10 redirects 
    ); 

    $ch      = curl_init( $url ); 
    curl_setopt_array( $ch, $options ); 
    $content = curl_exec( $ch ); 
    $err     = curl_errno( $ch ); 
    $errmsg  = curl_error( $ch ); 
    $header  = curl_getinfo( $ch ); 
    curl_close( $ch ); 

    //$header['errno']   = $err; 
   // $header['errmsg']  = $errmsg; 
    //$header['content'] = $content; 
    print($header[0]); 
    return $header; 
}  
$thisurl = "http://www.example.com/redirectfrom";
$myUrlInfo = get_web_page( $thisurl ); 
echo $myUrlInfo["url"];

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 19 '17 at 11:56

Here is my solution. I coded it, because none of the above worked correctly.

function get_final_location($url, $index=null) {

    if (is_array($url)) {
        $headers = $url;
    }
    else {
        $headers = get_headers($url, 1)['Location'];    
        if (count($headers) == 0) {
            return $url;
        }
    }

    if (is_null($index)) {
        $to_check   = end($headers);
        $index      = count($headers) - 1;
    }
    else {
        $to_check = $headers[$index];
    }

    if (!filter_var($to_check, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL) === false) {
        if (count($headers) - 1 > $index) {
            $lp = parse_url($headers[$index], PHP_URL_SCHEME) . "://" . parse_url($headers[$index], PHP_URL_HOST) . $headers[$index+1];
        }
        else {
            $lp = $to_check;
        }
    }
    else {
        $index--;
        $lp = landingpage($headers, $index);
    }

    return $lp;

}

Determine Final Destination of a Shortened URL in PHP?

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