How do I create a URL shortener?

Question

I want to create a URL shortener service where you can write a long URL into an input field and the service shortens the URL to \"http://www.example.org/abcdef\

Answer 1

Here is a decent URL encoding function for PHP...

// From http://snipplr.com/view/22246/base62-encode--decode/
private function base_encode($val, $base=62, $chars='0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ') {
    $str = '';
    do {
        $i = fmod($val, $base);
        $str = $chars[$i] . $str;
        $val = ($val - $i) / $base;
    } while($val > 0);
    return $str;
}