The Shawty gem is the simplest and fastest Ruby url-shortening app. Run your own server that works like tinyurl.com or is.gd.

• Clone this: git clone git://github.com/JackDanger/shawty-server.git
• Signup for an account at Heroku (better details here)
• don't even bother configuring it
• push it to Heroku.com: git push heroku master
• Revel.

If you run any application with published content it's helpful to have shorter links to that content.

Consider that your Rails app might offer pages like the following:

http://myapp.com/accounts/megacorp/invoices?single_access_token=5ASD32ADf89JKASF2346

Imagine trying to fit that in a text message. Instead, how about:

http://url.myapp.com/a7D

Yes. See the shawty-client gem for details:

Shawty.new(
    "http://url.myapp.com/"
  ).shrink(
    "http://myapp.com/accounts/megacorp/invoices?single_access_token=5ASD32ADf89JKASF2346"
  )
# => http://url.myapp.com/a7D
## Saved on your url.myapp.com shawty server and usable immediately

Way groovy.

Patches welcome, forks celebrated.

Copyright (c) 2009 Jack Danger Canty. See LICENSE for details.