PHP - How to check where shortened urls are leading to (goo.gl)

Question

Recently our forum is getting flooded by a spammer who always registers with a new identity and sending spam with a link to his website.

The website is already on our blacklist, however, now he is using Google URL shortener to spam (goo.gl/xxxx) and I wanted to ask, if Google is providing an API to resolve the shortened url (in PHP), so we can check if it leads to his website.

Is there already a PHP snipped we can use or a documentation how to prevent spamming using Google shortened links? Else I have to ban goo.gl as well.

UPDATE: Only spammers would downvote this question .!.

HAve you tried to use google - https://developers.google.com/url-shortener/v1/getting_started?hl=ru? — u_mulder, Oct 18 '14 at 17:00

Ali · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-18T17:12:17.183

1

Google does provide an API that allows you to expand URLs, to use it with PHP, simply

function unshorten_url($url) {
    $ch = curl_init('https://www.googleapis.com/urlshortener/v1/url?shortUrl='.$url);
    curl_setopt_array($ch, array(
        CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => TRUE,
        CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => TRUE,
        CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST => FALSE,
        CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => FALSE, 
    ));

    $json = curl_exec($ch);
    $array = json_decode($json, true);
    return $array['longUrl'];
}

echo unshorten_url('http://goo.gl/XXX');

edited Oct 18 '14 at 17:12

answered Oct 18 '14 at 17:06

Ali

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Works, have a nice weekend! – lickmycode Oct 18 '14 at 17:26

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:57

0

Use longurl (http://longurl.org/) api. More details here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/14641055/2055751

edited May 23 '17 at 11:57

Community

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answered Oct 18 '14 at 17:03

Hungry Mind

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I would use it, but they don't have https support, so I can't. – lickmycode Oct 18 '14 at 17:20

PHP - How to check where shortened urls are leading to (goo.gl)

2 Answers2