Bitly

A Ruby gem for using the version 4 Bitly API to shorten links, expand short links and view metrics across users, links and organizations.

• Installation
• Usage
  • Authentication
  • Creating an API client
  • Shorten a link
  • Expand a link
• Available API Endpoints
  • Groups
  • Organizations
  • Users
  • Bitlinks
  • Custom Bitlinks
  • Campaigns
  • BSDs (Branded Short Domains)
  • Webhooks
• Customising HTTP requests
  • Build your own adapter
• Development
• Contributing
• License
• Code of Conduct

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'bitly'

And then execute:

$ bundle install

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install bitly

Usage

For a quick introduction, read this blog post on how to use the Bitly API in Ruby.

Authentication

All API endpoints require authentication with an OAuth token. You can get your own OAuth token from the Bitly console. Click on the account drop down menu, then Profile Settings then Generic Access Token. Fill in your password and you can generate an OAuth access token.

For other methods to generate access tokens for users via OAuth flows, see the Authentication documentation.

Once you have an access token you can use all the API methods.

Creating an API client

All API methods are available through the Bitly::API::Client. Initialise the client with the access token like so:

client = Bitly::API::Client.new(token: token)

You can then use the client to perform actions with the API

Shorten a link

With an authenticated client you can shorten a link like so:

bitlink = client.shorten(long_url: "http://example.com")
bitlink.link
# => http://bit.ly/2OUJim0

Expand a link

With an authorised you can expand any Bitlink.

bitlink = client.expand(bitlink: "bit.ly/2OUJim0")
bitlink.long_url
# => http://example.com

Available API Endpoints

This gem supports the following active v4 API endpoints for theBitly API.

Groups

Groups documentation

• Retrieve groups (GET /v4/groups)
• Retrieve group (GET /v4/groups/{group_guid})
• Update group (PATCH /v4/groups/{group_guid})
• Retrieve tags by group (GET /v4/groups/{group_guid}/tags)
• Retrieve group preferences (GET /v4/groups/{group_guid}/preferences)
• Update group preferences (PATCH /v4/groups/{group_guid}/preferences)
• Retrieve Bitlinks by group (GET /v4/groups/{group_guid}/bitlinks)
• Retrieve sorted Bitlinks by group (GET /v4/groups/{group_guid}/bitlinks/{sort})
• Retrieve group shorten counts (GET /v4/groups/{group_guid}/shorten_counts)
• Retrieve click metrics for a group by referring networks (GET /v4/groups/{group_guid}/referring_networks)
• Retrieve click metrics for a group by countries (GET /v4/groups/{group_guid}/countries)
• [premium] Retrieve click metrics for a group by city (GET /v4/groups/{group_guid}/cities)
• [premium] Get group overrides (GET /v4/groups/{group_guid}/overrides)

Organizations

Organizations documentation

• Retrieve organizations (GET /v4/organizations)
• Retrieve organization (GET /v4/organizations/{organization_guid})
• Retrieve organization shorten counts (GET /v4/organizations/{organization_guid}/shorten_counts)

Users

Users documentation

• Retrieve user (GET /v4/user)
• Update user (PATCH /v4/user)

Bitlinks

Bitlinks documentation

• Shorten a link (POST /v4/shorten)
• Expand a Bitlink (POST /v4/expand)
• Retrieve a Bitlink (GET /v4/bitlinks/{bitlink})
• Create a Bitlink (POST /v4/bitlinks)
• Update a Bitlink (PATCH /v4/bitlinks/{bitlink})
• Delete an unedited hash Bitlink (DELETE /v4/bitlinks/{bitlink})
• Get clicks for a Bitlink (GET /v4/bitlinks/{bitlink}/clicks)
• Get clicks summary for a Bitlink (GET /v4/bitlinks/{bitlink}/clicks/summary)
• Get metrics for a Bitlink by countries (GET /v4/bitlinks/{bitlink}/countries)
• Get metrics for a Bitlink by referrers (GET /v4/bitlinks/{bitlink}/referrers)
• Get metrics for a Bitlink by referring domains (GET /v4/bitlinks/{bitlink}/referring_domains)
• Get metrics for a Bitlink by referrers by domain (GET /v4/bitlinks/{bitlink}/referrers_by_domains)
• [premium] Get metrics for a Bitlink by city (GET /v4/bitlinks/{bitlink}/cities)
• [premium] Get metrics for a Bitlink by device type (GET /v4/bitlinks/{bitlink}/devices)
• [premium] Retrieve a QR code for a Bitlink (GET /v4/bitlinks/{bitlink}/qr)
• [premium] Update a QR code (PATCH /v4/bitlinks/{bitlink}/qr)
• [premium] Create a QR code (POST /v4/bitlinks/{bitlink}/qr)

Custom Bitlinks

• Add custom Bitlink (POST /v4/custom_bitlinks)
• [premium] Retrieve custom Bitlink (GET /v4/custom_bitlinks/{custom_bitlink})
• [premium] Update custom Bitlink (PATCH /v4/custom_bitlinks/{custom_bitlink})
• [premium] Get metrics for a custom Bitlink by destination (GET /v4/custom_bitlinks/{custom_bitlink}/clicks_by_destination)
• [premium] Get clicks for a custom Bitlin's entire history (GET /v4/custom_bitlinks/{custom_bitlink}/clicks)

Campaigns

• [premium] Retrieve campaigns (GET /v4/campaigns)
• [premium] Create campaign (POST /v4/campaigns)
• [premium] Retrieve campaign (GET /v4/campaigns/{campaign_guid})
• [premium] Update campaign (PATCH /v4/campaigns/{campaign_guid})
• [premium] Retrieve channels (GET /v4/channels)
• [premium] Create channel (POST /v4/channels)
• [premium] Retrieve channel (GET /v4/channels/{channel_guid})
• [premium] Update channel (PATCH /v4/channels/{channel_guid})

BSDs (Branded Short Domains)

Branded Short Domains documentation

• Retrieve BSDs (GET /v4/bsds)

Webhooks

• [premium] Get webhooks (GET /v4/organizations/{organization_guid}/webhooks)
• [premium] Create a webhook (POST /v4/webhooks)
• [premium] Retrieve a webhook (GET /v4/webhooks/{webhook_guid})
• [premium] Update a webhook (POST /v4/webhooks/{webhook_guid)
• [premium] Delete a webhook (DELETE /v4/webhooks/{webhook_guid})
• [premium] Verify a webhook (POST /v4/webhooks/{webhook_guid}/verify)

Customising HTTP requests

This gem comes with an HTTP client that can use different adapters. It ships with a Net::HTTP adapter that it uses by default.

If you want to control the connection, you can create your own instance of the Net::HTTP adapter and pass it options for an HTTP proxy or options that control the request. For example, to control the read_timeout you can do this:

adapter = Bitly::HTTP::Adapters::NetHTTP.new(request_options: { read_timeout: 1 })
http_client = Bitly::HTTP::Client.new(adapter)
api_client = Bitly::API::Client.new(http: http_client, token: token)

Similarly, you can use an HTTP proxy with the adapter by passing the proxy variables to the adapter's constructor.

adapter = Bitly::HTTP::Adapters::NetHTTP.new(proxy_addr: "example.com", proxy_port: 80, proxy_user: "username", proxy_pass: "password")
http_client = Bitly::HTTP::Client.new(adapter)
api_client = Bitly::API::Client.new(http: http_client, token: token)

Build your own adapter

If you want even more control over the request, you can build your own adapter. An HTTP adapter within this gem must have a request instance method that receives a Bitly::HTTP::Request object and returns an array of four objects:

1. The response status code
2. The body of the response as a string
3. The response headers as a hash
4. A boolean denoting whether the response was a success or not

See ./src/bitly/http/adapters/net_http.rb for an example.

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/philnash/bitly. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting in the Bitly project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.