How do you programmatically expand a url link to its true location?

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How do you programmatically expand a url link to its true location?

Do you know about << spam >> and baidu.com? Baidu.com is a search engine that tries to discourage people from using their web site to make metasearch engines by hiding their links in a way that is a lot like how << spam >> works. << spam >> is a web site where, if you want to present someone with a link to something and that link is long, you can use tinyurl to produce a tiny url for presentation purposes.

Anyway, what I want to do is to find a way to programmatically take the link http://www.baidu.com/link?url=mW91GJqjJ4zBBpC8yDF8xDhiqDSn1JZjFWsHhEoSNd85PkV8Xil7qccoOX3rynaE (the first link in a search for Jessica Alba using baidu.com) and have it return the actual link, http://baike.baidu.com/view/270790.htm . That is just one example. What I want to do is not specific to Jessica but for using Baidu.com as part of my group of search engines in my meta search engine project.

Maybe there is a way of using the WebBrowser class but I did not see a member that was the URL.

Maybe there is a way of using WebRequest and WebResponse.

[rfirth]

Maybe there is a way of using the WebBrowser class but I did not see a member that was the URL.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.webbrowser.url.aspx

[-Alex-]

I'm presuming this in C#...

Anyway, here you go, it's nice and easy! :)

WebRequest WReq = WebRequest.Create("http://www.baidu.com/link?url=mW91GJqjJ4zBBpC8yDF8xDhiqDSn1JZjFWsHhEoSNd85PkV8Xil7qccoOX3rynaE");
WReq.Method = "HEAD"; // Only download the headers, not the page content
WebResponse WRes = WReq.GetResponse();
string ActualURL = WRes.ResponseUri.ToString();
MessageBox.Show(ActualURL);

Personally, I'm curious to what website "<< spam >>" could be :p

[the evn show]

Removed

[Original Poster]

Probably one of the url shortening services like tiny URL dot com.

a website so simple it was genius

[Karl L.]

I've never really thought about this before, but I'm intrigued by the idea. Thanks -Alex-, I didn't real it was so simple! After playing with it for a few minutes, I managed to accomplish the same thing using cURL (which isn't really anything novel).

curl -s -I http://www.baidu.com/link?url=mW91GJqjJ4zBBpC8yDF8xDhiqDSn1JZjFWsHhEoSNd85PkV8Xil7qccoOX3rynaE | awk '{if($1 == "Location:") print $2}'
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[b]Edit:[/b] Cool! the same thing works with bit.ly.

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curl -s -I bit.ly/TuX5wi | awk '{if($1 == "Location:") print $2}'
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