Google Sheets as URL Redirector

URL redirection link manager for Nginx that uses Google Sheets as a front end interface.

Features

• Redirect generation can be handled with confidence by non-technicals
• Sheet provides basic validation of URLs
• Google Sheets provides easy-to-use versioning to protect your data
• Script parsing is FAST
• Error correction protects existing "known good" from faults
• Native nginx redirection; No reliance on databases or dynamic code to parse requests
• Simple codebase to allow for modification

How the Sheet Works:

• Add category, name, URL you want, and what it redirects to
• Spreadsheet will check for basic parsing issues automatically

How the Server Works:

• Run or cron make.sh
• Creates a CSV from Google Docs using wget
• Validates CSV to prevent incorrect configurations
• Creates nginx syntax file of all redirects as redirect.conf
• Generates static HTML file with list of current redirects for indexing (with additional info)
• Restarts Nginx server to activate new links

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Configure Scripts

The Sheet

1. Clone the Google Sheet using this template
2. Click the blue share button, then "Get Shareable Link"
3. Copy the link it provides
4. Replace "/edit?usp=sharing" with "/export?format=csv" this is the link needed for make.sh

The Scripts 2. Clone this repo "git clone https://github.com/johnvilsack/sheets-url-redirect.git" 3. Find the @@ notations in make.py and make.sh; inserting your customizations

Configure nginx

In the server{} config:

location @redirect {
    include path_to_redirect.conf_file;
}

The redirect.conf file will be generated in the same folder you run the script from.

Putting it all together

1. Run ./make.sh
2. Test
3. Spend your time on something you enjoy

You can add this to cron for fun and profit.

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