URL_SHORTENER

This project is a URL shortener application built with FastAPI. It allows users to shorten long URLs, and manage them through a set of administrative endpoints, and forward to the original URLs.

Getting Started

Follow these steps to set up your environment:

1. Clone the Repository

To get started, clone this repository to your local machine:

git clone https://github.com/erfanghorbanee/url_shortener.git
cd url_shortener

2. Install Dependencies

Run the following command to install the necessary dependencies:

pip install -m requirements.txt

3. Set Up Environment Variables

We use environment variables to manage configuration and secrets. You'll find a file in the repository named .env_sample. This file contains all the required environment variables with placeholder values.

Here’s how to set up your .env file:

• Copy the .env_sample file and rename it to .env:

  cp .env_sample .env

• Open the .env file and replace all placeholder values with your actual data. For example:

  ENV_NAME="YOUR_ENV_NAME"
  BASE_URL="http://127.0.0.1:8000"
  DB_URL="sqlite:///./shortener.db"
  

4. Start the Application

Once you have configured your environment variables, you can start the application by running:

uvicorn shortener_app.main:app --reload

Your application should now be running on http://localhost:8000.

Endpoints

Endpoint	HTTP Verb	Request Body	Action
/	GET		Returns a Hello, World! string
/url	POST	Your target URL	Shows the created url_key with additional info, including a secret_key
/{url_key}	GET		Forwards to your target URL
/admin/{secret_key}	GET		Shows administrative info about your shortened URL
/admin/{secret_key}	DELETE	Your secret key	Deletes your shortened URL

Contributing

If you have suggestions or issues, please open an issue through GitHub. All contributions are welcomed.

TODO

• Custom URL key: Let your users create custom URL keys instead of a random string.
• Peek URL: Create an endpoint for your users to check which target URL is behind a shortened URL.
• Graceful Forward: Check if the website exists before forwarding.

Acknowledgements

This project was inspired by and built upon the tutorial from Real Python. For more details, you can check out the original tutorial here.