Hi ... we use super-long Hashes for the Registration of new Users in our Application. The Problem is that these Hashes break in some Email Clients - making the Links unusable.

I tried implementing the Tinyurl - API, with a simple Call, but i think it times out sometimes ... sometimes the mail does not reach the user.

I updated the Code, but now the URL is never converted. Is Tinyurl really so slow or am i doing something wrong? (I mean hey, 5 Seconds is much in this Times)

Can anybody recommend me a more reliable service?

All my Fault, forgot a false in the fopen. But i will leave this sample of code here, because i often see this sample, wich i think does not work very reliable:

return file_get_contents('http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url='.$u);

This is the - i think fully working sample. I would like to hear about Improvements.

static function gettinyurl( $url ) {

    $context =
        stream_context_create(
            array(
                'http' => array(
                    'timeout' => 5  // 5 Seconds should be enough
                )
            )
        );

    // get tiny url via api-create.php
    $fp = fopen( 'http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url='.$url, 'r', $context); // open (read) api-create.php with long url as get parameter

    if( $fp ) { // check if open was ok
        $tinyurl = fgets( $fp ); // read response

        if( $tinyurl && !empty($tinyurl) ) // check if response is ok
            $url = $tinyurl; // set response as url

        fclose( $fp ); // close connection
    }

    // return
    return $url; // return (tiny) url

}