How to shorten a URL in Laravel

Ever wanted to share a post from your blog and the URL was just too long, so you want to shorten your URL for clean representation?

In this shot, I will teach you an example of how to shorten a URL.

We will be installing a package to our application called short-URL.

Must have: PHP 8, Laravel 8, BC Math or GMP PHP extensions

Installation

Run the below composer command:

composer require ashallendesign/short-url

Publish config

Using the below code, we will publish the config file, which will also generate a migration file for our database.

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="AshAllenDesign\ShortURL\Providers\ShortURLProvider"

Migrate

We will migrate the database using the generated migration file with the below command:

php artisan migrate

Usage and example

From your controller, call the builder() class of the package and pass a ->make() method, like so:

$builder = new \AshAllenDesign\ShortURL\Classes\Builder();

$shortURLObject = $builder->destinationUrl('https://destination.com')->make();// place the original URL inside the destination().
$shortURL = $shortURLObject->default_short_url;//grab the shorten URL

As explained in the inline code comment, inside of the destination(), place the URL you wish to shorten, then finally grab the shortened URL.