Redirections (legacy)

The EVRYTHNG API makes it very easy to create a permanent short URL and associated QR code for every Thng and/or product in the Platform. Every request to this short URL (e.g. someone scanning the QR code with their mobile phone) will be automatically redirected to the URL of any web application bound to that Thng, respectively product.

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## Use Case Example

To illustrate this with an example, imagine a museum storing its entire catalogue in the EVRYTHNG Platform. A Thng would be created for each item, which can then be displayed using the museum's mobile web application, accessible at the following URL:

https://museum.com/displayWorks/catalogue.php?catalogue_id=UVpfh4EFsBpasUmnVDWdktKs

The catalogue_id parameter in the URL identifies the catalogue item to display data for (which is the ID of that item's Thng in the EVRYTHNG Platform). This is a long URL to be printed on a label next to each item on display in the museum, however it cannot be changed at a later time without reprinting all the labels. Our redirection service allows you to assign a much shorter URL for the default application above that can be easily entered on a mobile device, or especially encoded in a QR code or NFC tag. A short URL will typically look like this:

https://tn.gg/:shortId

The shortId is an alphanumeric and case-sensitive random string (by default 8 characters). Once the redirection has been created, any HTTP request on the short URL will be automatically forwarded to the target URL (the default app URL with or without the Thng ID in it), using the HTTP status code 307 Temporary Redirect.

Our official short URL domain is tn.gg, though other domains can be used for custom projects. Usage of custom domain also allows to define custom short IDs that have to be unique under domain and meet EVRYTHNG standards (check requirements below).

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Custom Domains Available

In addition to the built-in short domain shown above, we also offer the ability to name your short domain, or even use your own company domain entirely.

Please contact us to find out more about this Enterprise feature.

To setup and manage redirections, use the corresponding POST/GET/PUT/DELETE endpoints provided by the redirection service under the appropriate short domain (by default, https://tn.gg).

## Example Redirections

Read Redirections in the API Reference section for API examples.

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Beyond Simple Redirections: the Redirector

Redirections are great to get you started as well as to serve content for a particular Thng or product. However, if you want to go beyond this and create default redirections for an account or for applications, or to create conditional redirections (e.g., depending on the time of the day), our powerful Redirector service is definitely worth a try!