Introduction to Bitly

Bitly is a powerful tool that allows users to shorten, share, manage, and analyze links. It offers a variety of APIs that can be used to integrate Bitly functionality into your own applications.

APIs Overview

Bitly provides a suite of APIs that can be used to perform various actions such as creating shortened links, expanding shortened links, retrieving link metrics, and more.

Example 1: Create a Shortened Link

  
    POST /v4/shorten
    {
      "long_url": "https://example.com/very/long/url"
    }
  

This API call will create a new shortened link for the provided long URL.

Example 2: Expand a Shortened Link

  
    POST /v4/expand
    {
      "bitlink_id": "bit.ly/shortened"
    }
  

This API call will provide the original long URL for the given shortened link.

Example 3: Retrieve Link Metrics

  
    GET /v4/bitlinks/{bitlink_id}/clicks
  

This API call retrieves the number of clicks for the specified shortened link.

Example 4: Retrieve Clicks by Country

  
    GET /v4/bitlinks/{bitlink_id}/countries
  

This API call retrieves the number of clicks by country for the specified shortened link.

Example 5: Update a Bitlink

  
    PATCH /v4/bitlinks/{bitlink_id}
    {
      "title": "Updated Title"
    }
  

This API call updates the title for the specified shortened link.

App Example

Let’s create a simple application that utilizes Bitly’s API to shorten URLs and display the link metrics:

  
    import requests

    BITLY_TOKEN = 'YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN'

    headers = {
        'Authorization': f'Bearer {BITLY_TOKEN}',
        'Content-Type': 'application/json'
    }

    def shorten_url(long_url):
        data = {"long_url": long_url}
        response = requests.post('https://api-ssl.bitly.com/v4/shorten', headers=headers, json=data)
        return response.json().get('id')
      
    def get_link_metrics(bitlink_id):
        response = requests.get(f'https://api-ssl.bitly.com/v4/bitlinks/{bitlink_id}/clicks', headers=headers)
        return response.json()

    if __name__ == "__main__":
        long_url = 'https://example.com/very/long/url'
        short_url = shorten_url(long_url)
        print(f'Shortened URL: {short_url}')

        metrics = get_link_metrics(short_url)
        print(f'Link Metrics: {metrics}')
  

This simple application will shorten a given long URL and then retrieve and display the click metrics for the shortened URL.

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