Shorty: A Simple, Self-Hosted URL Shortener

What, you need more information than the title?

I looked around and found a bunch of toy examples of backend URL shorteners in Go, or PHP/MySQL solutions which seemed complicated and less-than-fully-featured. I wanted to make something that spins up with super-simple configuration and has a pluggable backend. Please contribute!

If you don't like what you see, you can also check out the other alternatives:

• YOURLS
• Google Apps
• Other "shorty" repos on Github

Goals For The Project

• Optimized for simple deployment
• Designed for internal network use
• Clear ownership of URLs
• Expiry of URLs unless explicitly set (TODO: flash warning if URL is about to expire)
• Tags to allow grouping / organization

Deployment

After a few simple steps, I promise you will be up and running and won't need to touch it again.

Pick a backend database.

Currently the only two options are:

• PostgreSQL
• Redis

If you have a favorite backend you don't see here, please help me by creating a pull request! I recommend a persistent storage - your users are not going to be happy if they lose these URLs!

Edit the database creation script

Find the script corresponding to your database and open it in a text editor. If there are TODOs, follow the instructions. You may modify this as you wish (for instance, perhaps you may want to use a different Postgres schema than 'shortener'), however this means that you'll likely have to be more careful setting other environment variables later.

• PostgreSQL

Run the database creation script

PostgreSQL

Enter your admin-user's password when prompted.

psql -p 5432 -U YOUR_ADMIN_USER -d YOUR_DATABASE -f ./scripts/postgres.sql

You also might want to change the default password for the shortener user:

psql -p 5432 -U YOUR_ADMIN_USER -d YOUR_DATABASE -c "ALTER ROLE shortener WITH PASSWORD 'TODO'"

Pick a deployment method

Docker

The latest published image at: [schimmy/easy-url-shortener](dockerhub TODO). Run this Docker container with the relevant environment variables for your database.

Standalone Server (Windows, Linux)

We also release binaries for Windows and Linux, available at github.com/schimmy/shorty/releases. After setting the relevant environment variables, simply execute the binary. Likely you'll want to ensure that it restarts on reboot, etc, and I've included an init script to help you out.

Linux example:

PG_HOST=my-postgres.colinschimmelfing.com PG_PASS=super_secret ./shorty --read-only=false

That's it, you're done!

If you'd like other methods of deploying, please create a pull request with support and documentation.

Advanced Usage

Readonly / External Facing

You might want to expose and use these redirects outside of your VPN, but there's a problem: you need to ensure that your organization has control over the URLs. While we will add an authentication gateway in the future, you can also use the read-only mode to solve this issue.

To do this, run one instance in read-only mode, and point your external DNS (in this example: colinshorty.com) at that instance:

PG_HOST=my-postgres.colinschimmelfing.com PG_PASS=super_secret ./shorty --read-only=true --domain=colinshorty.com --protocol=https

Then, run one private instance pointing to the same backend. This is your admin interface. Set all parameters except read-only to the same values as the external instance so that it's easier to copy-paste the submitted URLs

PG_HOST=my-postgres.colinschimmelfing.com PG_PASS=super_secret ./shorty --read-only=false --domain=colinshorty.com --protocol=https