With recent discussions about URL shortners, Jonathan Snook decided to work up his own quick version using some of the built-in routing of the CakePHP framework.

With all the talk of URL shortening services, I decided to add a quick service into Snook.ca, which is run on CakePHP, to redirect a short URL to a post. Because my static content already has short URLs and all I have are posts, creating a short URL handler for it was very easy.

His shortener is used on his posts for his blog to redirect the smaller URLs back to the post they reference. The result is a route that connects something like "/s/id_number" over to the correct post (as seen here). He also offers a suggestion for a "super-compressed" URL tat converts it down to a three-character shortened version that can then be easily converted back down to the decimal equivalent.