URL Shortener

This project is a simple URL shortener built using Node.js and MySQL. It allows users to shorten long URLs and redirect them to their corresponding long URLs. Features

• Shorten long URLs
• Redirect short URLs to their corresponding long URLs
• MySQL database to store short and long URLs
• Generates unique short URLs using the shortid library

Prerequisites

• Node.js
• MySQL

Installation

• Clone the repository to your local machine

git clone https://github.com/ayushch80/url-shortener.git

• Install the necessary packages

npm install

• Create a MySQL database and table to store the short and long URLs.

CREATE DATABASE url_shortener;
USE url_shortener;
CREATE TABLE urls (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    short_url VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    long_url VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    created_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);

• Update the MySQL connection details in the .env as follows file.

PRODUCTION=[Whether it should run in production mode (true or omit the line)]
PUBLIC_PORT=[The port on which the server should run]
SQL_HOST=<MySQL host>
SQL_USER=<MySQL user>
SQL_PASSWORD=<MySQL password>

• Start the server

node app.js

Usage

• To shorten a long URL, visit http://localhost:3000/shorten?longUrl=<long-url> in your browser.
• To redirect a short URL to its corresponding long URL, visit http://localhost:3000/<short-url> in your browser.
• To view the contents of the urls table, visit http://localhost:3000/urls in your browser.

Note

• The server is running on port 3000, you can change it as per your requirement.
• The database credentials should be updated as per your setup.
• Make sure to validate the input and sanitize the output when displaying data from a database to prevent SQL injection and other security risks.
• The /urls route should only be accessible to authorized personnel and should be removed or secured in a production environment.
• Displaying raw data from the database on a web page can also be a security concern. It would be a good idea to only show the necessary information and not the entire database.