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

For a similar project, to get a new key, I make a wrapper function around a random string generator that calls the generator until I get a string that hasn't already been used in my hashtable. This method will slow down once your name space starts to get full, but as you have said, even with only 6 characters, you have plenty of namespace to work with.