[ELPA] New package: shorten-url

[ELPA] New package: shorten-url

[Nicolas Rybkin]

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* SENT IT ON FEB 26 FROM ibmbull@yandex.ru, BUT GOT NO RESPNSE SO FAR.
MAYBE YOUR SPAM FILTER FILTERS OUT ALL MAIL COMING FROM yandex.ru SERVER? *

shorten-url allows you to insert a shortened alternative for a given URL.
Can be useful for chatting.

;;; shorten-url.el --- URL shortener         -*- lexical-binding: t; -*-

;; Copyright (C) 2019 Bad Blue Bull

;; Author: Bad Blue Bull <ibmbull@yandex.ru <bad_blue_bull@yandex.ru>>
;; Keywords: irc, icq

;; Version: 1.0

;; This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
;; it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
;; the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at
;; your option) any later version.

;; This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
;; WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
;; MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
;; General Public License for more details.

;; You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
;; along with this program.  If not, see
;; <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

;;; Commentary:

;; shorten-url allows you to insert a shortened alternative for a given
;; URL.  Can be useful for chatting.
;;
;; A request for a URL produced by concatenation of shorten-url-base
;; with a URL passed as an argument is fulfilled and data from HTTP
;; response gets inserted into current buffer.
;;
;; At the moment of this release TIMEOUT optional variable of
;; url-retrieve-synchronously may break execution of this function
;; (bug  #34607), so it's unused.
;;
;; Also url-retrieve-synchronously takes long time to retrieve a URL
;; that hasn't been retrieved before in some interval of time in same
;; Emacs session (bug #34652).

;; Configuration:

;; You can customize shorten-url-base to use diffirent URL shortener web
;; service.

;; Usage:

;; Call shorten-url from Lisp or execute it as command with URL you want
;; to shorten passed as an argument.
;;
;; Example:
;;
;; M-x shorten-url https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=34607
;;
;; result inserted: https://qps.ru/MjrtW
;;
;; For convenient usage bind a key sequence so that it will insert
;; shortened version of URL stored in kill ring.
;; Here is example how you can bind C-c C-y key sequence so that when it
;; is used in ERC it inserts a shortened URL corresponding to element of
;; kill ring that the yank command would insert:
;;
;; (add-hook 'erc-mode-hook (lambda ()
;;                (local-set-key (kbd "C-c C-y")
;;                       (lambda (&optional arg)
;;                         (interactive "*P")
;;                         (shorten-url (current-kill
;;                               (cond
;;                                ((listp arg)
;;                                 0)
;;                                ((eq arg '-)
;;                                 -2)
;;                                (t
;;                                 (1- arg)))
;;                               ))))))

;;; Code:

(provide 'shorten-url)

(defcustom shorten-url-base "https://qps.ru/api?url="
  "base for URL shortener.
short-url will concatenate it with URL passed as argument"
  :type '(choice (const :tag "https://qps.ru/api?url="
            "https://qps.ru/api?url=")
         (const :tag "https://clck.ru/--?url="
            "https://clck.ru/--?url=")
         (string :tag "custom" "")))

(defun shorten-url (url)
  "Insert shortened URL (passed as argument).
Contact a URL produced by concatenation shorten-url-base and the
argument and insert data from response from the server into current
buffer."
       (interactive "sURL to shorten: ")
       (insert (with-current-buffer
           (url-retrieve-synchronously
            (concat shorten-url-base url) nil 't)
         (goto-char (point-min))
         (search-forward "\n\n" nil 't)
         (unwind-protect
             (buffer-substring (point) (point-max))
           (kill-buffer (current-buffer)))))
       (message "inserted shortened URL for %s" url))

;;; shorten-url.el ends here

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Re: [ELPA] New package: shorten-url

[Amin Bandali]

Hello,

Your message(s) did reach the list:

- https://lists.gnu.org/r/emacs-devel/2019-02/msg00740.html
- https://lists.gnu.org/r/emacs-devel/2019-03/msg00006.html

It’s just that people haven’t had time/interest to look into and give
feedback etc.  As the message was sent very recently (~4 days ago), I’d
recommend giving it some time and trying again after a week or two, if
you don’t hear from anyone by then.

One thing I would mention is that if you’re interested in getting this
package into GNU ELPA if all goes well, you need fill out the copyright
assignment form if you haven’t already done so.  Unless of course you
had previously assigned the copyright for your contributions to Emacs,
in which case I believe filling a specific assignment for an individual
package may not be necessary.

Re: [ELPA] New package: shorten-url

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Is the shortened URL expanded locally inside Emacs?
Does it refer to a real website?

In the example it gives https://qps.ru/MjrtW as an example, Was
https://qps.ru/ chosen by your customization?  If so, what made that
choice desirable?  Why not use sh:e/ (abbreviation of "short:emacs")
instead?  It is much shorter.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: shorten-url

[Nicolas Rybkin]

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>
> Is the shortened URL expanded locally inside Emacs?
> Does it refer to a real website?

Of course it refers to a real website, the idea is that you can use
shortened URL in chat so the people you're chatting with could use it too.
 "what made that choice desirable?" it's working and it suits me well :/
shorten-url-base is customizable.

On Sat, Mar 2, 2019 at 6:35 AM Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> Is the shortened URL expanded locally inside Emacs?
> Does it refer to a real website?
>
> In the example it gives https://qps.ru/MjrtW as an example, Was
> https://qps.ru/ chosen by your customization?  If so, what made that
> choice desirable?  Why not use sh:e/ (abbreviation of "short:emacs")
> instead?  It is much shorter.
>
>
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman
> President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
>
>
>

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Re: [ELPA] New package: shorten-url

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > Is the shortened URL expanded locally inside Emacs?
  > > Does it refer to a real website?

  > Of course it refers to a real website, the idea is that you can use
  > shortened URL in chat so the people you're chatting with could use it too.
  >  "what made that choice desirable?" it's working and it suits me well :/
  > shorten-url-base is customizable.

Now it is starting to make sense, but it presumes that the shortened
URL is defined on a web server, not just in Emacs.  Does your package
set up the definition too?

That wasn't clear to me when I read the first message.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: shorten-url

[Nicolas Rybkin]

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See explanation Yuri Khan has made earlier.  My package, like said in
comment, makes a request for a URL produced by concatenation of
shorten-url-base with a URL passed as an argument and inserts data returned
in response in current buffer.  It's up to web server to produce shortened
URL.
The idea is that for example https://clck.ru/FHyra may look more nice than
http://global.espn.com/football/blog/transfer-talk/79/post/3789639/live-transfer-talk-manchester-uniteds-100m-battle-for-jadon-sancho-with-psg
Consider that people you're chatting with may use smartphones and long
links would look nasty on small screens.

On Sun, Mar 3, 2019 at 6:00 AM Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > > Is the shortened URL expanded locally inside Emacs?
>   > > Does it refer to a real website?
>
>   > Of course it refers to a real website, the idea is that you can use
>   > shortened URL in chat so the people you're chatting with could use it
> too.
>   >  "what made that choice desirable?" it's working and it suits me well
> :/
>   > shorten-url-base is customizable.
>
> Now it is starting to make sense, but it presumes that the shortened
> URL is defined on a web server, not just in Emacs.  Does your package
> set up the definition too?
>
> That wasn't clear to me when I read the first message.
>
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman
> President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
>
>
>

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Re: [ELPA] New package: shorten-url

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > See explanation Yuri Khan has made earlier.  My package, like said in
  > comment, makes a request for a URL produced by concatenation of
  > shorten-url-base with a URL passed as an argument and inserts data returned
  > in response in current buffer.  It's up to web server to produce shortened
  > URL.

I don't entirely follow that.  Are you saying that your code does
contact the abbreviation server to define the shortened URL?  If so,
it makes sense.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: shorten-url

[Nicolas Rybkin]

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yep it does

On Mon, Mar 4, 2019 at 6:27 AM Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > See explanation Yuri Khan has made earlier.  My package, like said in
>   > comment, makes a request for a URL produced by concatenation of
>   > shorten-url-base with a URL passed as an argument and inserts data
> returned
>   > in response in current buffer.  It's up to web server to produce
> shortened
>   > URL.
>
> I don't entirely follow that.  Are you saying that your code does
> contact the abbreviation server to define the shortened URL?  If so,
> it makes sense.
>
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman
> President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
>
>
>

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Re: [ELPA] New package: shorten-url

[Yuri Khan]

On Sat, Mar 2, 2019 at 10:35 AM Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> Is the shortened URL expanded locally inside Emacs?
> Does it refer to a real website?
>
> In the example it gives https://qps.ru/MjrtW as an example, Was
> https://qps.ru/ chosen by your customization?  If so, what made that
> choice desirable?  Why not use sh:e/ (abbreviation of "short:emacs")
> instead?  It is much shorter.

URL shorteners work this way:

1. Alice gives an ordinary URL to an external web service.
2. That service generates a short ID, associates it with the input
URL, and stores this association into its database.
3. It then responds to Alice with a shortened URL composed from the
service’s prefix and the generated short ID.
4. Alice shares the shortened URL with Bob.
5. Bob accesses the shortened URL with a browser.
6. The web service looks up the ID in its database and retrieves the
original URL.
7. It sends Bob an HTTP response that will, among other things, cause
his browser to go to the original URL.

So no, the expansion does not happen locally, it happens on the web
service that generated the shortened URL.

There are trust, integrity, privacy, and availability issues
associated with URL shorteners:

* Bob does not see where the shortened URL leads. It may expand to a
link to a malicious resource, and Bob has to rely on his browser’s and
operating system’s protection when his browser is redirected there.

* The URL shortener service may attempt to track the users who use it
to shorten or expand URLs, and collect statistics on individual
shortened URL usage. Some actually offer this as a feature; e.g. Alice
might learn whether Bob followed the shortened URL she sent.

* The URL shortener service may attempt to display advertisements to
users who access shortened URLs, before redirecting them to the
expanded URL.

* The URL shortener service may attempt to run non-free and/or
malicious Javascript on the users’ browsers. Executing that Javascript
might or might not be a requirement to obtaining the expanded URL.

* The URL shortener service may be discontinued at any time at the
decision of its maintainer.

* The URL shortener service’s database may be compromised, changing
the ID/URL associations.

* The URL shortener service may reside on a host that later becomes
blocked in a certain country.


As an example, I accessed the https://qps.ru/MjrtW link with curl(1).
I got a 46888-byte response that:

* redirects to https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=34607
after 15 seconds or when the user clicks a hyperlink in the HTML;
* attempts to load scripts from
https://pushance.com/ntfc.php?p=2053241&tco=1 and
https://dolohen.com/apu.php?zoneid=2053231;
* attempts to load a (presumably tracking) image from
https://counter.yadro.ru/hit, passing it the shortened URL, the URL of
the page that referred the user to the shortened URL, the screen pixel
count and color depth of the user, and a random number generated on
the user’s browser;
* displays an advertisement offering free-as-in-beer web forum hosting
on mybb.ru;
* and also contains a big unreadable blob of Javascript which I will
not attempt to reverse-engineer.

Re: [ELPA] New package: shorten-url

[Nicolas Rybkin]

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https://clck.ru/FHnJJ is the alternative

> ~ $ curl https://clck.ru/FHnJJ
> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
> <title>Redirecting...</title>
> <h1>Redirecting...</h1>
> <p>You should be redirected automatically to target URL: <a href="
> https://sba.yandex.net/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdebbugs.gnu.org%2Fcgi%2Fbugreport.cgi%3Fbug%3D34607&amp;client=clck&amp;sign=ae74c1736ecb62b804356c42c7186694
> ">
> https://sba.yandex.net/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdebbugs.gnu.org%2Fcgi%2Fbugreport.cgi%3Fbug%3D34607&amp;client=clck&amp;sign=ae74c1736ecb62b804356c42c7186694</a>.
> If not click the link.
>


On Sat, Mar 2, 2019 at 4:37 PM Yuri Khan <yurivkhan@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 2, 2019 at 10:35 AM Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> > Is the shortened URL expanded locally inside Emacs?
> > Does it refer to a real website?
> >
> > In the example it gives https://qps.ru/MjrtW as an example, Was
> > https://qps.ru/ chosen by your customization?  If so, what made that
> > choice desirable?  Why not use sh:e/ (abbreviation of "short:emacs")
> > instead?  It is much shorter.
>
> URL shorteners work this way:
>
> 1. Alice gives an ordinary URL to an external web service.
> 2. That service generates a short ID, associates it with the input
> URL, and stores this association into its database.
> 3. It then responds to Alice with a shortened URL composed from the
> service’s prefix and the generated short ID.
> 4. Alice shares the shortened URL with Bob.
> 5. Bob accesses the shortened URL with a browser.
> 6. The web service looks up the ID in its database and retrieves the
> original URL.
> 7. It sends Bob an HTTP response that will, among other things, cause
> his browser to go to the original URL.
>
> So no, the expansion does not happen locally, it happens on the web
> service that generated the shortened URL.
>
> There are trust, integrity, privacy, and availability issues
> associated with URL shorteners:
>
> * Bob does not see where the shortened URL leads. It may expand to a
> link to a malicious resource, and Bob has to rely on his browser’s and
> operating system’s protection when his browser is redirected there.
>
> * The URL shortener service may attempt to track the users who use it
> to shorten or expand URLs, and collect statistics on individual
> shortened URL usage. Some actually offer this as a feature; e.g. Alice
> might learn whether Bob followed the shortened URL she sent.
>
> * The URL shortener service may attempt to display advertisements to
> users who access shortened URLs, before redirecting them to the
> expanded URL.
>
> * The URL shortener service may attempt to run non-free and/or
> malicious Javascript on the users’ browsers. Executing that Javascript
> might or might not be a requirement to obtaining the expanded URL.
>
> * The URL shortener service may be discontinued at any time at the
> decision of its maintainer.
>
> * The URL shortener service’s database may be compromised, changing
> the ID/URL associations.
>
> * The URL shortener service may reside on a host that later becomes
> blocked in a certain country.
>
>
> As an example, I accessed the https://qps.ru/MjrtW link with curl(1).
> I got a 46888-byte response that:
>
> * redirects to https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=34607
> after 15 seconds or when the user clicks a hyperlink in the HTML;
> * attempts to load scripts from
> https://pushance.com/ntfc.php?p=2053241&tco=1 and
> https://dolohen.com/apu.php?zoneid=2053231;
> * attempts to load a (presumably tracking) image from
> https://counter.yadro.ru/hit, passing it the shortened URL, the URL of
> the page that referred the user to the shortened URL, the screen pixel
> count and color depth of the user, and a random number generated on
> the user’s browser;
> * displays an advertisement offering free-as-in-beer web forum hosting
> on mybb.ru;
> * and also contains a big unreadable blob of Javascript which I will
> not attempt to reverse-engineer.
>

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Re: [ELPA] New package: shorten-url

[Yuri Khan]

On Sat, Mar 2, 2019 at 11:06 PM Nicolas Rybkin <nr68020@gmail.com> wrote:

> https://clck.ru/FHnJJ is the alternative

This is much cleaner. If you publish your package with only these two
providers, consider making clck.ru the default.

However, consider also adding bit.ly and/or tinyurl.com; they may be
more familiar and trustworthy to users outside Russia.

Re: [ELPA] New package: shorten-url

[Van L]

Yuri Khan writes:

> However, consider also adding bit.ly and/or tinyurl.com; they may be
> more familiar and trustworthy to users outside Russia.

As well as url shortening, outline.com re-presents the page content for
readability and the website's name is uncomplicated.

[ELPA] New package: shorten-url

[Bad Blue Bull]

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