JSON API + wordpress URL - wordpress

Question

I'm using a small JSON API for URL shortener that I would like to integrate on all my Wordpress pages.
I know how to render the Wordpress page URL but what I don't know (due to no experience with APIs) is how to render the API result on the Wordpress page.
Here is the API call:
http://abc.net/api?api=123&url=LONGURL
Here is the API result:
{
"error":"0",
"short":"http://abc.net/ALIAS",
}
Here is the WP url that needs to replace the "LONGURL" above:
<?php echo get_permalink(); ?>
What I need is to show the "short" result.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

Assuming you've set allow_url_fopen to true in php.ini
function get_short_permalink() {
$permalink = get_permalink();
$response = file_get_contents('http://abc.net/api?api=123&url=' . $permalink);
$response = json_decode($response, true);
if($response['error'] == 0) {
return $response['short'];
}
return $permalink;
}
Then replace <?php echo get_permalink(); ?> with <?php echo get_short_permalink(); ?> in your templates.
What this function does:
gets the original permalink
sends a GET request to your API
transforms the response from a JSON string to a PHP array (see the docs for the bool $assoc parameter of json_decode)
returns the shortened link if the error code is 0, or the original link if not
You'll have to work with cURL if you can't (or don't want to) enable url_fopen.
Also, WordPress has a built-in wrapper over cURL that could simplify things a lot: wp_remote_get