terse

Short URL server written in go which stores all URL short code mappings in an in-memory least recently used (LRU) cache.

Getting Started

# Install the `terse` command
go get github.com/brettlangdon/terse/cmd/...

# Start the server
terse

$ curl -i -X POST -d "https://github.com/brettlangdon/terse" http://127.0.0.1:5893
HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2015 01:10:12 GMT
Content-Length: 28
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

http://127.0.0.1:5892/DEtr1b
$ curl -i http://127.0.0.1:5892/DEtr1b
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://github.com/brettlangdon/terse
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2015 01:10:54 GMT
Content-Length: 72
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

<a href="https://github.com/brettlangdon/terse">Moved Permanently</a>.

Installing

Install via go get with go get github.com/brettlangdon/terse/cmd/....

terse requires GO15VENDOREXPERIMENT=1 in order to build.

Usage

$ ./terse --help
usage: terse [--max MAX] [--bind BIND] [--server SERVER]

options:
  --max MAX, -m MAX      max number of links to keep ("0" means no limit) [default: 1000]
  --bind BIND, -b BIND   "[host]:<port>" to bind the server to [default: 127.0.0.1:5892]
  --server SERVER, -s SERVER
                         base server url to generate links as (e.g. "https://short.domain.com") [default: "http://<bind>"]

Max

terse uses an in-memory least recently used (LRU) cache and defaults to having a limit of only 1000 links. This means that after generating 1000 URLs the least recently used URLs will start to be purged from the cache.

You can control this limit with the --max parameter. Setting the value to 0 will disable the size limit of the cache.

Bind

If you would like to change the host or port that terse listens on by default then supply the --bind parameter. Examples: 127.0.0.1:5892, :80, 0.0.0.0:8000, etc.

By default terse will listen to 127.0.0.1:5892.

Server

By default terse will respond with URLs generated based on the --bind parameter. This means that by default you will get responses like http://127.0.0.1:5892/<SHORT CODE>. Instead, if you would like to generate URLs with a different scheme and hostname, supply the correct --server parameter.

For example:

terse --server "https://s.example.org"

Will produce URLs like https://s.example.org/<SHORT CODE>.

API

terse has a very simple to use API.

Creating Links

To create a new short link, issue a POST request to the server with the POST body of the URL to shorten.

For example:

curl -X POST -d "https://github.com/brettlangdon/terse" http://127.0.0.1:5892

A valid response will have the status 201 Created, and the response body will be the short URL.

You may also receive a 400 Bad Request if the POST body is not a valid URL. Or a 409 Conflict if there was a hash conflict (two different URLs ended up with the same short code).

Accessing Links

To utilize a short link, issues a GET request for the URL. If the short code exists in the system then the response will be a 301 Moved Permanently for the stored URL.

If the short code does not exist, then you will receive a 404 Not Found response.