您如何缩短使用Twitter API（php）发送的推文中的url？

Question

I'm using the Twitter API (php) and when posting statuses through it, it doesn't seem to use t.co to shorten urls. I read that t.co is only used when posting a tweet and not for outside apps or websites, but that makes it sound like it isn't a "public use" url shortener (eg bit.ly) but that it was only for use within Twitter - I didn't think this meant that it cannot be used via the API.

I still can't find whether this is the case or not because, on the one hand, my URLs aren't getting shortened, but on the other hand I've found discussions and even stackoverflow questions like this which say that urls will be shortened when using the API, no matter what, even if they are shorter than the url shortened length (I believe it is 23 chars at the moment).

Could somebody please clarify this for me? And if it is the case that you cannot shorten URLs with t.co when using the twitter API, could somebody recommend me a good url shortening service/api that has a PHP wrapper?

Thank you for your time.

Answer 1

Check out twitters dev docs on t.co links . The FAQ section on that page covers your question.

When are links wrapped with t.co? Do I need to make an extra API call? Links will be wrapped when Twitter receives a Tweet using POST statuses/update or a direct message using POST direct_messages/new. The wrapped link will be contained in the response to a successful request. You don't need to make any extra API calls.

Will t.co-wrapped links always be the same length? The maximum length of t.co URLs will change over time. Issue a request daily to GET help/configuration and examine the fields short_url_length and short_url_length_https to determine the current maximum length of wrapped URLs. We do not expect these values to change often.

It is important to note that you won't necessarily know the length of a t.co URL before posting. Consider the short_url_length field a maximum possible length for a t.co-wrapped link. When designing a Tweet entry box, it's best to consider all URLs as equalling the maximum possible short_url_length.

Whenever you come across conflicting information and are unsure what the actual case is, the API docs should always have the final say. Normally they will be the most up to date source of information.

All links submitted within Tweets and direct messages, regardless of length, will eventually be wrapped with t.co.

Emphasis mine. This line from the docs subtlety hints that there could be delays in the shortening process.