VATS.IM URL Shortener - Now Available for General Use

[Neil Farrington]

VATS.IM is a URL shortening service for VATSIM and its members, and is now available to the public for general use at https://vats.im/.

 

The service has been in use by VATSIM UK since 2014, providing shorter URLs that allow easy and memorable access to resources such as documents and charts, and a way of providing pilots with simple links in an Air Traffic Controller's ATIS or controller information block.

 

Due to the development work required to broaden the service's access, VATS.IM has been restricted to only VATSIM UK for the longest time. However, with the appropriate infrastructure now in place, the service is ready for all regions, divisions, ARTCCs, vACCs, controllers, and pilots to make use of what it has to offer.

 

Official VATSIM entities (regions, divisions etc.) may apply for a prefix for their organization, which will also allow them to generate unique URLs for their organization, and provide more meaning to the URL.

 

However, the service is available for anyone to use. If you have a URL you need to put in your controller information or pilot remarks that would normally be too long or unnecessary, simply log in via VATSIM SSO at https://vats.im/ and create a shorter, custom URL.

 

Full source code and change log available at https://github.com/NFarrington/vatsim-url-shortener.

Edited February 13, 2021 at 05:49 PM by Neil Farrington

[Andreas Fuchs]

Great news, thanks for sharing this with the general membership/the world!!

[Kieran Samuel Cross]

Awesome idea. Looks very nice.

 

I've never seen this before, but I love it.

Don't worry, I was doing something I shouldn't have been, to see that.

[Daniel Hawton]

Awesome idea. Looks very nice.

 

I've never seen this before, but I love it.

Don't worry, I was doing something I shouldn't have been, to see that.

 

That's default Laravel 5.6 exceptions.