crodjer / memorable

URL shortner in Rust

Memorable

Memorable is a URL shortening service, written in Rust. It is based on:

• iron web framework.
• diesel ORM.
• PostgreSQL

Setup

• Install PostgreSQL. In Debian Unstable:

  sudo apt install postgresql-10
  

• Create a database and its owner in PostgreSQL. Add DATABASE_URL to shell env or create a .env file on this project's top level with the database credentials:

  DATABASE_URL=postgres://clerk:i-store@localhost/memorable
  

• Install diesel cli:

  cargo install diesel_cli --no-default-features --features postgres
  

• Setup DB

  diesel setup
  

CLI Interface

For initial development, I ended up writing a CLI interface so that I could play with diesel without integrating the web server (iron):

$ cargo run -- --help
    Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.0 secs
     Running `target/debug/memorable --help`
memorable 0.1.0
Rohan Jain <[e-mail]>


USAGE:
    memorable [SUBCOMMAND]

FLAGS:
    -h, --help       Prints help information
    -V, --version    Prints version information

SUBCOMMANDS:
    help       Prints this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)
    lookup     Look up an already shortened link.
    server     Start the URL shortner server.
    shorten    Shorten a new url

Shorten a URL

Store the rust website with key rust:

$ cargo run -- shorten http://rust-lang.org/ --title "The Rust Programming Language" -c rust
    Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.0 secs
      Running `target/debug/memorable shorten 'http://rust-lang.org/' --title 'The Rust Programming Language' -c rust`
http://rust-lang.org/	rust	The Rust Programming Language

Look it back up:

$ cargo run -- lookup rust                                       ~/projects/memorable
    Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.0 secs
      Running `target/debug/memorable lookup rust`
http://rust-lang.org/	rust	The Rust Programming Language

Auto generated shortening key:

$ cargo run -- shorten http://google.com/                        ~/projects/memorable
    Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.0 secs
      Running `target/debug/memorable shorten 'http://google.com/'`
http://google.com/	b7fkgoc

b7fkgoc is the shortened URL here.

Server

I can't call this project a URL shortening service until we actually have a web service. Start it with:

$ cargo run -- server

Shorten a URL with:

$ curl -X POST "localhost:3000/shorten?url=https://en.wikipedia.org/"
http://localhost:3000/4reqrki

Now, when you open http://localhost:3000/4reqrki, the service will redirect you to: https://en.wikipedia.org/.