cgil / shortener

Url shortener

URL Shortener

Description

The concept is to take a url and produce a short version using a Base62 representation of the url.

The shortened snippet has a bidirectional mapping to the primary key in the Snippet table.

When we request one of the short urls, we parse your request's User-Agent to figure out your device type. If a specialized redirect url (mobile, tablet) is specified we use that, otherwise we use the default redirect url (desktop_redirect). We also increment the counter for the used redirect type.

We use:

• marshmallow-jsonapi to create a JSON-api and schema validation.
• Blueprints and Flask-restful to create modular REST apis.
• PostgreSQL as our datastore.
• Alembic for migrations.

Database

Dependency on PostgreSQL.

Bootstrap

cd shortener
virtualenv env
source env/bin/activate
pip install fabric

# Bootstrap your environment
fab bootstrap

# Bootstrap your database
fab bootstrap_database
fab bootstrap_database:env=test

Testing

source env/bin/activate
fab test

Running a server locally

source env/bin/activate
fab serve

Production server

TBD

Tables

Snippet

• id: Integer PK - Encoded to a short url
• desktop_redirect: String, Required - The redirect url for desktop
• mobile_redirect: String - The redirect url for mobile
• tablet_redirect: String - The redirect url for tablet
• desktop_redirect_count: Integer, default = 0 - Counter for redirects to desktop
• mobile_redirect_count: Integer, default = 0, Counter for redirects to mobile
• tablet_redirect_count: Integer, default = 0, Counter for redirects to tablet
• short_url: String - The short url

The Snippet table contains a url snippet containing redirects for mobile, tablet, and desktop, as well as keeping counters for each time each redirect is used.

Endpoints

Create a new snippet:

• desktop_redirect --> redirect for desktop as well as default
• mobile_redirect --> redirect for mobile
• tablet_redirect --> redirect for tablet

Request:

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d '{"data":{"attributes":{"desktop_redirect":"https://facebook.com/", "mobile_redirect":"https://wikipedia.com", "tablet_redirect": "https://google.com"},"type": "snippets"}}' http://localhost:5000/snippets/

Response:

{
    "data": {
        "attributes": {
            "desktop_redirect": "https://facebook.com/",
            "desktop_redirect_count": 0,
            "mobile_redirect": "https://wikipedia.com",
            "mobile_redirect_count": 0,
            "short_url": "http://localhost:5000/1",
            "tablet_redirect": "https://google.com",
            "tablet_redirect_count": 0,
            "time_since_creation": "-1 day, 19:00:00.010453"
        },
        "id": "1",
        "type": "snippets"
    }
}

Get data for all snippets

Request:

curl http://localhost:5000/snippets/

Response:

{
    "data": [
        {
            "attributes": {
                "desktop_redirect": "https://facebook.com/",
                "desktop_redirect_count": 0,
                "mobile_redirect": "https://wikipedia.com",
                "mobile_redirect_count": 0,
                "short_url": "http://localhost:5000/1",
                "tablet_redirect": "https://google.com",
                "tablet_redirect_count": 0,
                "time_since_creation": "-1 day, 19:01:11.517199"
            },
            "id": "1",
            "type": "snippets"
        },
        {
            "attributes": {
                "desktop_redirect": "https://facebook.com/",
                "desktop_redirect_count": 0,
                "mobile_redirect": "https://wikipedia.com",
                "mobile_redirect_count": 0,
                "short_url": "http://localhost:5000/2",
                "tablet_redirect": "https://google.com",
                "tablet_redirect_count": 0,
                "time_since_creation": "-1 day, 19:00:15.089031"
            },
            "id": "2",
            "type": "snippets"
        }
    ]
}

Get data for a single snippet

Request:

curl http://localhost:5000/snippets/1

Response:

{
    "data": {
        "attributes": {
            "desktop_redirect": "https://facebook.com/",
            "desktop_redirect_count": 0,
            "mobile_redirect": "https://wikipedia.com",
            "mobile_redirect_count": 0,
            "short_url": "http://localhost:5000/1",
            "tablet_redirect": "https://google.com",
            "tablet_redirect_count": 0,
            "time_since_creation": "-1 day, 19:02:13.839261"
        },
        "id": "1",
        "type": "snippets"
    }
}

View a short url

• Visit the snippet. ex. http://localhost:5000/1 (where the snippet is 1)
• curl the snippet endpoint setting a specified user-agent (for testing)

curl -H "User-Agent: ipad" http://localhost:5000/1