restAPI

Url Shortener REST API written in GoLang and SQLite

Description

This is REST API provides two functionalities:

1. Assigning a unique short url to the passed long url. The short url will consist of 8 random characters.
2. Redirecting to the original url when loading the short url.

Interface

- Assign a unique short url to a long url

At http://127.0.0.1:8080/shorten use the POST method to pass a JSON key-value pair. Use the keyword "url", and set the value to the url you want to shorten.

Example: You could POST the following JSON message: { "url" : "https://drewderieg.com/thisIsAVeryLongUrl" }.

Returns: This will return a JSON response in the following format: { "short_url" : "F8eiKwl9" }

- Redirect to the original url

In order to redirect from a short url to the original url use the GET method at http://127.0.0.1:8080/{short_url}.

Example: Call http://127.0.0.1:8080/F8eiKwl9 and you will be redirected to https://drewderieg.com/thisIsAVeryLongUrl.

Installation

To build and run go you must have a current GoLang installation on your system. Visit https://go.dev/doc/install for more information.

Since this API is deploying a SQLite database you must ensure that:

• you set the environment variable CGO_ENABLED=1
• you have gcc compile present within your path

Download the project into your $GOPATH, move to the new restAPI directory and run the command $ go run main.go.

An alternative is to build the binary by running $ go build in the project directory. This will create a binary named restAPI.

Note

• The current database is deleted every time you rerun the server.
• You must pass the full url including the protocol when you use the http://127.0.0.1:8080/shorten POST entry point.
• This API is made to handle a decent number of "long url" - "short url" pairs. You need to modify the code if you want to create and store billions of short urls.