Convert eBay Link Generator results into bitly.com link

Question

I managed a small PHP script that takes the eBay product searched and converts it into promote eBay link.

It goes like this:

user searches for example: ocz vertex
clicks on "Submit" and gets the results in following format

http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?icep_ff3=10&pub=5575165347&toolid=10001&campid=5337851510&customid=&icep_uq=ocz vertex&icep_sellerId=&icep_ex_kw=&icep_sortBy=15&icep_catId=&icep_minPrice=&icep_maxPrice=&ipn=psmain&icep_vectorid=229466&kwid=902099&mtid=824&kw=lg

(Can't fix that space in the link generated between ocz and vertex words)

Now, the result is nice, but I want to shorten it via bitly.com account using their API.
Basicly I want it to generate and convert the full eBay link results into small bitly.com link (http://ebay.to/2scU91k for example) and to see that link on my bitly account.

The process would go like this:

User search for term like ocz vertex
click on "Submit"
get the ebay.to short link (while the real process is in background, converts to rover.ebay.com address and then to ebay.to using my bitly.com credentials)

I found that and that and especially that, but didn't understand how do I implement the results as a new bitly convert.

Here's the PHP code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/screen.css">
<style type="text/css">
    body{
        margin:0px;
        font-size:0.7em;
        font-family:trebuchet ms;
                            color:#222;
    }
    #mainContainer{
        width:840px;    
        margin:5px;
    }
    table,tr,td{
        vertical-align:top;
    }
    .textInput{
        width:300px;
    }
    html{
        margin:0px;
    }
    .formButton{
        width:75px;
    }
    textarea,input,select{
        font-family:helvetica;
    }
    i{
        font-size:0.9em;
    }



    </style>
<script language="Javascript">
<!--
var copytoclip=1
function HighlightAll(theField) {
var tempval=eval("document."+theField)
tempval.focus()
tempval.select()
if (document.all&&copytoclip==1){
therange=tempval.createTextRange()
therange.execCommand("Copy")
window.status="Contents highlighted and copied to clipboard!"
setTimeout("window.status=''",1800)
}
}
//-->
</script>


</head>
<table width="80%" height="100px" align="center" style="margin:0 auto"><tr><td align="center">
<h2>Link Generator Online</h2>
</td><tr></table>
<table width="80%" align="center" style="margin:0 auto"><tr><td align="center">
       </div>

 </td><td valign="top">
 <form action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>" method="post">
<br>
URL<br>
<input type=text style="font-size: 13px; font-family: tahoma,arial; font-weight: bold; color: #000000; BORDER: #555 1px solid ; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #FFF" input name="url"  size="20">
<br>

<br>
<input type="SUBMIT" name="submit" VALUE="Submit"> 
</form>
</td></tr></table>
<?php
if(isset($_POST['submit'])){
$url = $_POST['url'];
$name=array($url);
foreach ($name as $name) 
{
if (ereg("^\.",$url)) {
echo "<br><center><font color=\"red\">Invalid Characters.</center>";  
 Die();
}
if (ereg("\<", $url)) {
echo "<br><center><font color=\"red\">Invalid Characters.</center>";  
 Die();
}
if (ereg("\[", $url)) {
echo "<br><center><font color=\"red\">Invalid Characters.</center>";  
 Die();
}
if (ereg("\'", $url)) {
echo "<br><center><font color=\"red\">Invalid Characters.</center>";  
 Die();
}
if (ereg("\#", $url)) {
echo "<br><center><font color=\"red\">Invalid Characters.</center>";  
 Die();
}
if (ereg("\`", $url)) {
echo "<br><center><font color=\"red\">Invalid Characters.</center>";  
 Die();
}

if (!strlen($url)) {
echo "<br><center><font color=\"red\">Empty Field.</center>";

Die();
}
if (strlen($url) > 100) {
echo "<br><center><font color=\"red\">The field cannot contain more than 150 characters.</center>";

 Die();
}
}
?>
<br>
<center>
<form name="vini">
<a class="highlighttext" href="javascript:HighlightAll('vini.select1')">Select All</a><br>
<textarea name="select1" rows=3 cols=75 style="font-family:tahoma;color:#555;border:1px dashed #ccc">
http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?icep_ff3=10&pub=5575165347&toolid=10001&campid=5337851510&customid=&icep_uq=<?php echo $url ?>&icep_sellerId=&icep_ex_kw=&icep_sortBy=15&icep_catId=&icep_minPrice=&icep_maxPrice=&ipn=psmain&icep_vectorid=229466&kwid=902099&mtid=824&kw=lg
</textarea>
<br>
</form>

<?php
}
?>
</body>
</html>

See on live: Ebay link Generator

your ebay link generation link seems broken, more over so. when user serarches for "ocz vertex" simply url_encode it. this will not break your link and the proper link will be passed to bitly and back. url_encode your user's search input — Gunnrryy, Jul 07 '17 at 16:01
can u fix the link to ebay link generator? so i can check and tell u correctly — Gunnrryy, Jul 07 '17 at 18:47

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 08 '17 at 00:14

I built a small solution that works without external libraries. It essentially boils down to this:

Acquire an API key from the "Register an application" dashboard or an oauth token from the oauth API
Make the request to the /v3/shorten API endpoint with your token and URL

First step: Get the token

You only need to do this once. Bitly's documentation lists a few examples how you can do it using curl, I think that is the easiest way. You could also do it with PHP. Simply make this POST request (taken from here):

curl -u "username:password" -X POST "https://api-ssl.bitly.com/oauth/access_token"

The result is something like this:

e663e30818201d28dd07803e57333bed4f15803a

That is your token.

Second step: Make the request

Insert the token and url-encoded URL into the HTTP request to the /v3/shorten endpoint:

<?php
$ebay_url = "http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?icep_ff3=10&pub=5575165347&toolid=10001&campid=5337851510&customid=&icep_uq=ocz%20vertex&icep_sellerId=&icep_ex_kw=&icep_sortBy=15&icep_catId=&icep_minPrice=&icep_maxPrice=&ipn=psmain&icep_vectorid=229466&kwid=902099&mtid=824&kw=lg"

$token = "e663e30818201d28dd07803e57333bed4f15803a"; // change this
$endpoint = "https://api-ssl.bitly.com/v3/shorten?access_token=".$token."&longUrl=".urlencode($ebay_url)."";
$result = file_get_contents($endpoint);
$json = json_decode($result, true);
$short_url = $json["data"]["url"];
echo $short_url;
?>

The result of the API call is JSON and needs to be decoded. An example is in the documentation. This code example does not take into consideration API timeouts or other errors that might occur (such as token expiry, which is currently not an issue).

The complete code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/screen.css">
<style type="text/css">
    body{
        margin:0px;
        font-size:0.7em;
        font-family:trebuchet ms;
                            color:#222;
    }
    #mainContainer{
        width:840px;    
        margin:5px;
    }
    table,tr,td{
        vertical-align:top;
    }
    .textInput{
        width:300px;
    }
    html{
        margin:0px;
    }
    .formButton{
        width:75px;
    }
    textarea,input,select{
        font-family:helvetica;
    }
    i{
        font-size:0.9em;
    }
    </style>
<script language="Javascript">
<!--
var copytoclip=1
function HighlightAll(theField) {
    var tempval=eval("document."+theField)
    tempval.focus()
    tempval.select()
    if (document.all&&copytoclip==1){
        therange=tempval.createTextRange()
        therange.execCommand("Copy")
        window.status="Contents highlighted and copied to clipboard!"
        setTimeout("window.status=''",1800)
    }
}
//-->
</script>


</head>
<table width="80%" height="100px" align="center" style="margin:0 auto"><tr><td align="center">
<h2>Link Generator Online</h2>
</td><tr></table>
<table width="80%" align="center" style="margin:0 auto"><tr><td align="center">
       </div>

 </td><td valign="top">
 <form action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>" method="post">
<br>
Insert keywords:<br>
<input type=text style="font-size: 13px; font-family: tahoma,arial; font-weight: bold; color: #000000; BORDER: #555 1px solid ; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #FFF" input name="url"  size="20">
<br>

<br>
<input type="SUBMIT" name="submit" VALUE="Submit"> 
</form>
</td></tr></table>
<?php
if(isset($_POST['submit'])){
$url = $_POST['url'];
$name = array($url);
foreach ($name as $name) {
    if (preg_match("/^[\.\<\[#`]/",$url)) {
        echo "<br><center><font color=\"red\">Invalid Characters.</center>";  
        Die();
    }
    if (!strlen($url)) {
       echo "<br><center><font color=\"red\">Empty Field.</center>";
       Die();
    }
    if (strlen($url) > 100) {
       echo "<br><center><font color=\"red\">The field cannot contain more than 150 characters.</center>";
       Die();
    }
}

$ebay_url = "http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?icep_ff3=10&pub=5575165347&toolid=10001&campid=5337851510&customid=&icep_uq=".urlencode($url)."&icep_sellerId=&icep_ex_kw=&icep_sortBy=15&icep_catId=&icep_minPrice=&icep_maxPrice=&ipn=psmain&icep_vectorid=229466&kwid=902099&mtid=824&kw=lg";

$token = "e663e30818201d28dd07803e57333bed4f15803a";
$endpoint = "https://api-ssl.bitly.com/v3/shorten?access_token=".$token."&longUrl=".urlencode($ebay_url);
$result = file_get_contents($endpoint);
$json = json_decode($result, true);
$short_url = $json["data"]["url"];

?>
<br>
<center>
<form name="vini">
<a class="highlighttext" href="javascript:HighlightAll('vini.select1')">Select All</a><br>
<textarea name="select1" rows=3 cols=75 style="font-family:tahoma;color:#555;border:1px dashed #ccc">
<?php echo $short_url; ?>
</textarea>
<br>
</form>

<?php
}
?>
</body>
</html>

Note: I changed your ereg calls to preg_match for compatibility with PHP7 and shortened the ifs with a regular expression. I also used urlencode($url) so that spaces won't break the link.

$ebay_url and $token are changing all the time. Is there a solution for that? — StackBuck, Jul 08 '17 at 18:18
@StackBuck I'm not sure how your complete script/backend works, you could store the token in a config file or database. And for the Ebay URL that changes you might want to consider using [`sprintf`](http://php.net/manual/en/function.sprintf.php) and store some template-URLs somewhere that have a placeholder for the keywords. — chrki, Jul 08 '17 at 19:01
What parameters needs to be on "data" and "url" at the line: $short_url = $json["data"]["url"]; ? Also, from where that line takes the search words? dont see it in the code. Btw, how "sprintf" works? — StackBuck, Jul 08 '17 at 19:04
`$json` is the decoded JSON from the API. It is converted to a PHP object/array that has a named index `data`, this is again an array and has `url`. THe original data looks something like this: `{data: { url: "http://bit.ly/..." }}`. Search words are coming from `$url = $_POST['url'];` and are inserted into the `$ebay_url`. Here are a few examples for sprints (check the PHP documentation too): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1386593/why-use-sprintf-function-in-php — chrki, Jul 08 '17 at 19:12
Do i must include those search words into database or so? I only want that script to create and list new short link on bitly under my bitly account. — StackBuck, Jul 08 '17 at 19:15
URLs that you generate with the code above will be listed in your account, no need to have your own database — chrki, Jul 08 '17 at 19:16
Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/148702/discussion-between-stackbuck-and-chrki). — StackBuck, Jul 08 '17 at 20:22

Convert eBay Link Generator results into bitly.com link

1 Answers1

First step: Get the token

Second step: Make the request

Linked