Anyway to shorten URL via PHP FORM?

I currently have people filling out a form with the following information:

1. Your Name
2. Recipient Name
3. Message
4. Amount

I'm wondering how I can get when they fill out this information, it inputs it into a link.. for example this is the code I'm using right now which works:

http://mywebsite.com/picture.php?to=" . $rname . "&from=" . $sname . "&message=" . $message . "&amount=" . $amount .

I'm wondering now how I can get that link to be shorter? Maybe with a TINY URL API or something? But how would I go about doing that?

As you've already highlighted, the best way to do this is via an API. It's actually quite easy to use the Tiny URL API if you have CURL installed:

function get_tiny_url($url)  {  
    $ch = curl_init();  
    $timeout = 5;  
    curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,'http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url='.$url);  
    curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);  
    curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,$timeout);  
    $data = curl_exec($ch);  
    curl_close($ch);  

    return $data;  
}

//test it out!
$your_url = 'http://mywebsite.com/picture.php?to=' . $rname . '&from=' . $sname . '&message=' . $message . '&amount=' . $amount;
$short_url = get_tiny_url($your_url);

//returns your tiny url
echo $short_url;

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