Shortening URLS using goo.gl

googl.py

import cgi
import urllib, urllib2
import logging

from django.utils import simplejson

class Googl():
  def __init__(self, api_key):
    self.api_key = api_key
    self.base_url = 'https://www.googleapis.com/urlshortener/v1/url?key=%s' % self.api_key

  def shorten(self, long_url):
    try:
      post_params = {'longUrl': long_url}
      request = urllib2.Request(url=self.base_url, data=simplejson.dumps(post_params))
      request.add_header('Content-type', 'application/json')
      response = urllib2.urlopen(request)
      json = simplejson.loads(response.read())
      short_url = json['id']
      return short_url
    except urllib2.HTTPError, e:
      logging.info('Error shortening: %s' % e.read())
      return None