inteliPaste

inteliPaste uses a simple infinite loop to scan the clipboard for URLs and when it finds one, it request the Google URL shortener API to create a new shortened URL and writes it in the clipboard.

Dependencies

To have access to the clipboard, it uses the pyperclip so it should be installed: pip install pyperclip.

To create the HTTP requests to the google API: pip install requests.

To download the library and set up a project on google developer console follow here.

Installation

The first thing you should do (after installing all dependencies) is set up a project on the developers console and add API key credentials. Then create a environment variable with the key by the name of API_KEY*.

• If you are on linux, run the following command on terminal: export API_KEY="key=YoUrAp1K3yHere".
• As an alternative for the environment variable, you can uncomment line 10 (and comment line 9) and use the API_KEY as a local variable (beware of the risks of keep such information on code).

*IMPORTANT OBSERVATION: in order to persist the environment variable, you should add to you system.

Now you are ready to go, just run python intellipaste.py and start receiving shortened URLs on the clipboard. as an alternative to execute the scrip every time, you can add it as a cron job (linux only).

• First, give execution permission: chmod +x intellipaste.py
• Now, on terminal run crontab -e and add @reboot /path/to/script/intellipaste.py.

If you are on windows, you can compile the application as a standalone (not really standalone) binary with PyInstaller, its super easy, install and you are ready to go and add it to start with the system. Or you can set up a .bat file that executes python intellipaste.py and add it as well.