URL Shortener

An easily configurable, locally host-able URL shortener written in Golang. A (small) weekend project.

Requirements
Quick Start
Configuration
Deployment
Database Management
Usage

Requirements

To run and deploy this application, you will need a few things:

Quick Start

To start the service (quickly), run the following:

make vendor
make docker-build
make docker-run
make db-create
make db-init

Configuration

Name	Environment Variable	Values	Description
encoding	`URL_LOGGER_ENCODING`	`console` or `json`	The encoding of the logger.
level	`URL_LOGGER_LEVEL`	`info`, `debug`, `warning`, `error`, `dpanic`, `panic`, and `fatal`	The level at which logs are recorded.
REST host	`URL_REST_HOST`	`localhost` or `0.0.0.0`	The hostname of the REST server, should be `localhost` outside of container, and `0.0.0.0` inside a container.
REST port	`URL_REST_PORT`	`8080`	The port of the REST server.
DB Host	`URL_DATABASE_HOST`	`localhost` or `database`	The host of the PostgreSQL instance, should be `localhost` outside of a container, and `database` inside a container.
DB Port	`URL_DATABASE_PORT`	`5432`	The port of the PostgreSQL instance, this is the default port.
DB User	`URL_DATABASE_USER`	`postgres`	The user of the database, this is the default user.
DB Password	`URL_DATABASE_PASSWORD`	`postgres`	The password to the user, this can be changed to whatever value is required.
DB Name	`URL_DATABASE_NAME`	`urlshortener`	The name of the database within the PostgreSQL instance that the application uses.
DB Capacity	`URL_DATABASE_CAPACITY`	`10`	The complexity of generated URLs. Directly impacts the length of generated ID's.

Deployment

This project makes use of docker-compose, so the following commands can be used:

To build the containers

docker-compose build --no-cache

To run the containers

docker-compose up -d

To bring the containers down

docker-compose down

To view the logs of the containers

docker-compose logs -f [container-name]

Database

This project uses PostgreSQL for data persistence. It saves any data from the instance to a ./db/ directory placed in the project directory.

To create the database within the PostgreSQL instance:

make db-create

Then, to populate the database with the urls table:

make db-init

To wipe all data from the database:

make db-wipe

Additionally, you can exec into the container using:

make db-exec

There is a known issue where the service is running, and the database is created for the first time, the application may not recognise the database as created. In this case, restart the application container. This can be done with:

docker-compose restart rest-server

Usage

It is what it says on the tin -- it's a basic URL shortener. Links have an expiry time added to them by default, but this can be altered easily here. I may add some more customisability in the future.

For both of the below scenarios, we assume that the application is running on localhost:8080.

Create a new short URL

URL: POST http://localhost:8080/api/v1/shortener/

Request:

{
    "url":"https://github.com/alexmerren"
}

Response:

{
    "id": "WTWBY9Rr5C"
}

Retrieve a full URL

URL: GET http://localhost:8080/api/v1/shortener/WTWBY9Rr5C/