How do I get the destination URL of a shortened URL using Ruby?

Question

How do I take this URL http://t.co/yjgxz5Y and get the destination URL which is http://nickstraffictricks.com/4856_how-to-rank-1-in-google/

Answer 1

I've used open-uri for this, because it's nice and simple. It will retrieve the page, but will also follow multiple redirects:

require 'open-uri'

final_uri = ''
open('http://t.co/yjgxz5Y') do |h|
  final_uri = h.base_uri
end
final_uri # => #

The docs show a nice example for using the lower-level Net::HTTP to handle redirects.

require 'net/http'
require 'uri'

def fetch(uri_str, limit = 10)
  # You should choose better exception.
  raise ArgumentError, 'HTTP redirect too deep' if limit == 0

  response = Net::HTTP.get_response(URI.parse(uri_str))
  case response
  when Net::HTTPSuccess     then response
  when Net::HTTPRedirection then fetch(response['location'], limit - 1)
  else
    response.error!
  end
end

puts fetch('http://www.ruby-lang.org')

Of course this all breaks down if the page isn't using a HTTP redirect. A lot of sites use meta-redirects, which you have to handle by retrieving the URL from the meta tag, but that's a different question.