URL Shortening

Overview

A short link is an alias that points at an existing dynamic link. It lives on the same project subdomain ({subdomain}.linksense.net/{slug}) and inherits the parent link's routing, social preview, deep-link config, and analytics. The only difference is the path: shorter, brandable, memorable.

Short Links vs Custom Paths

Both feel similar but serve different roles:

• Custom paths are part of a dynamic link's identity. One per link.
• Short links are campaign-style aliases. A link can have many; delete and recreate to rotate.

Both share the slug namespace within a project — you cannot have a short link with the same path as a sibling custom path (or vice versa).

Creating in the Dashboard

REST API

Short link CRUD is available under the project-scoped REST API. Authenticate with an API key (ls_live_…). All endpoints require the Pro plan; calls from Starter accounts return 403 FORBIDDEN_PLAN.

Create

curl -X POST https://linksense.net/api/v1/projects/$PROJECT_ID/short-links \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LINKSENSE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "dynamic_link_id": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000",
    "slug": "promo"
  }'

Successful responses return 201 Created with the new short link plus its fully-formed short_url:

{
  "data": {
    "id": "11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111",
    "project_id": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000",
    "dynamic_link_id": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000",
    "slug": "promo",
    "short_url": "https://acme.linksense.net/promo",
    "source": "api",
    "created_by": "...",
    "created_by_api_key_id": "...",
    "created_at": "2026-05-25T12:00:00Z",
    "updated_at": "2026-05-25T12:00:00Z"
  }
}

List

curl "https://linksense.net/api/v1/projects/$PROJECT_ID/short-links?page=1&limit=10&dynamic_link_id=$LINK_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LINKSENSE_API_KEY"

Optional query params: page (default 1), limit (default 10, max 100), dynamic_link_id to filter to a single parent.

Get / Delete

# Fetch
curl https://linksense.net/api/v1/projects/$PROJECT_ID/short-links/$ID \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LINKSENSE_API_KEY"
 
# Delete (slugs are immutable — delete and recreate to rename)
curl -X DELETE https://linksense.net/api/v1/projects/$PROJECT_ID/short-links/$ID \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LINKSENSE_API_KEY"

SDK Resolve

Native apps can expand a short URL into its parent dynamic link payload via the SDK resolve endpoint. The wire contract is live today; convenience methods (resolve(shortURL)) ship in the next minor SDK release per platform.

curl -X POST https://linksense.net/api/sdk/v1/short-links/resolve \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LINKSENSE_SDK_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "slug": "promo" }'

The response contains the slug echo plus the parent dynamic link in the same shape returned by GET /api/sdk/v1/links/{linkId} — so SDKs can feed it straight into existing routing logic.

Analytics

Clicks on a short URL roll up to the parent dynamic link's analytics. The Top Links table shows a "Via short" badge per row with the count and most-used slug, so you can see which campaigns are driving traffic without breaking apart the parent link's totals.

Slug Rules & Collisions

• 3–20 characters
• Lowercase a–z, digits 0–9, single - or _ between alphanumerics
• No leading or trailing separators
• Reserved words (e.g. dashboard, api) are rejected
• Unique within a project across both short_links and dynamic_links.custom_path

Collisions return 409 SLUG_EXISTS. Auto-generated slugs retry on collision; the keyspace (1.6M combinations per project at length 4) keeps that practically free.

Pricing

URL shortening is a Pro feature. There is no per-link cap beyond the standard project link limit. Starter accounts see an upgrade prompt in the dashboard and receive 403 FORBIDDEN_PLAN from the REST API.