URL shortening is used to create shorter aliases for long URLs. Users are redirected to the original URL when they hit these short URLs. A shorter version of any URL would save a lot of space whenever we use it, for example, when printing or tweeting as tweets have a character limit.

For example, if we were to shorten this page through TinyURL:
https://packtpub.com

In this case, we would get http://tinyurl.com/jlg8zpc.

The shortened URL is nearly 1/3 of the size of the actual URL.

URL shortening is used for optimizing links across devices, tracking individual links to analyze audience and campaign performance, and hiding affiliated original URLs, and so on.

If you haven't used tinyurl.com before, please try creating a new shortened URL and spend some time going through different options their service offers. This will help you a lot in understanding this chapter better.

You can also use bit.ly to understand the concept better.

Let's look over the requirements imposed by the system.