urlshorteneR wraps 2 URL services Bit.ly and its 2 friends is.gd as well as v.gd. For Bit.ly, in order to shorten URLs and downloading useful statistics about them, you have to authenticate using Bearer Token, for which you need user account and API key.

For 2 other services is.gd & v.gd, there is no authentication needed. Just create desired short links, see below.

Bit.ly

User/App Information & Authentication for Bit.ly

Return some basic information about my user on Bit.ly. Additionally, is my account a “premium” one?

library("knitr")
library(urlshorteneR)

if (interactive()) {
  bitly_bearerToken("access token")
  ui <- bitly_user_info(showRequestURL = TRUE)
  is_bitly_user_premium_holder()
}

We can also decide to update my username with a different one.

if (interactive()) {
  bitly_update_user(name = "John Malc", showRequestURL = TRUE)
}

And what about the metadata about our OAUTH application?

if (interactive()) {
  bitly_bearerToken("access token")
  bitly_app_details()
}

Group Information

This retrieves information about a single group that user belongs to and and then about all groups that user are associated with.

if (interactive()) {
  bitly_bearerToken("access token")
  bitly_retrieve_group(ui$default_group_guid)
  bitly_retrieve_groups()
}

Information about Organizations

Official API documentation https://dev.bitly.com/api-reference.

The first method returns an information about myself.

if (interactive()) {
  bitly_bearerToken("access token")
  bitly_user_info()
}

Custom Bitlinks

bitly_bearerToken("access token")
if (interactive()) {
  df <- data.frame(
    pubDate = rep("2016-02-10", 4),
    link = c(
      "https://www.google.com",
      "https://www.apple.com"
    )
  )
  df

  fin <- NULL
  for (p in 1:length(df$link)) {
    fin[[p]] <- bitly_create_bitlink(long_url = df$link[p])
  }
}

WARNING: This will proceed only with the two real links, not with the NA, NULL or an empty strings. These, however, will stop the flow of the code (i.e. are errors).

Tutorial for urlshorteneR – v4

dmpe @ github

2025-04-13

Bit.ly

User/App Information & Authentication for Bit.ly

Group Information

Information about Organizations

Custom Bitlinks

Is.gd & V.gd

Is.gd

V.gd