How to use Tinyurl.com dynamically

I have a feedback Form from which my visitors send their views. At times, I see very long URLs get submitted via my Form and get entered into my database. But, when displaying the URL, my page gets distorted..

Is there a way I can script this so I can automatically convert this long URL to a small url using TinyURLcom for instance - like what Twitter does..

i.e. I want to shorten this long URL automatically before it is inserted into the database

From:
To
Thank you.

-AJ

re: How to use Tinyurl.com dynamically

If you want to create a Tiny URL.com URL, then you will have to make a HTTP request to the create.php page of TinyURL.com, but if the only reason for this is the display, then how about shortening the URL when displaying, e.g.
or specify link text as well as the link itself.

re: How to use Tinyurl.com dynamically

aCoder -

Your solution would work only if I have a field that collects URLs only, however, my field is a textarea, the visitors are allowed to put text in this field, but at times, they paste URLs too within the text – that is the issue I am facing with.

If there is a long URL berried within the text, how do I shorten it or worse case scenario, how do I prevent/strip a URL before it gets inserted into the database.

Thanks
-AJ

re: How to use Tinyurl.com dynamically

Oh, I see. Well, in that case, parse the field value. You could use a regular expression to replace links with the shorter display by using REReplace.