Create Shortlink Task

Some email programs may have issues with long links. Links to endpoints (containing all parameters) may get long, so this can become a problem.

The “Short Link To Endpoint” feature allows shorter links to endpoints (including all parameters) to be created. This is analogous to Forwarding Between Endpoints, with the exception that rather than the destination endpoint getting executed immediately, a link is created to the processing of that endpoint.

The task creates a short-link in the database with a random code. The resulting full link, including the code and also including the base URL of the current installation of Endpoints.

The short link looks like this: [base-url]/shortlink/RANDOMCODE.

The generated link is written to an output intermediate variable. The concept of intermediate valriables is described here: Intermediate Values.

The shortlink will be auto-deleted in the database after the time specified in expires-in-minutes. For example, if you put expires-in-minutes="1440" then the link will be available for 1 day. After that time the link will not work any longer.

Use a syntax like the following to create a short link to an endpoint in the variable ${foo}. (You can choose any other variable name, of course).

<task id="create-link"
      class="endpoints.task.CreateShortLinkToEndpointTask"
      destination-endpoint-name="test"
      output-intermediate-value="foo"
      expires-in-minutes="1440"/>

The variable ${foo} can then be used as an input-intermediate-value in a subsequent task.

For example, you can send an email containing ${foo} in the email-body. The xslt (to create the email-body) would look like this:

<a>
  <xsl:attribute name="href" select="transformation-input/parameters/intermediate-value[@name eq 'foo']/@value"/>
  <xsl:text>Short Link</xsl:text>
</a>