goshort

README

goshort

Simple URL shortener written in React and Golang, using SQLite.

What is goshort doing?

Goshort shortens given URL into a random character string that is much prettier and easier to remember. When we enter a short URL into the search bar, the goshort redirects us to its source page. Shortener can provide a short URL without a time limit or a short URL, which is valid between 1 and 60 minutes.

Usage

You can set up goshort either using Docker, or manually building it from source. To install it, firstly cd into $GOPATH/src/github.com/mpinta and clone the repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/mpinta/goshort

Docker

Requirements in order to install project with Docker are:

• Docker
• Docker Compose

The easiest way to install goshort is by running the docker-compose.yml file. The file will automatically create backend and web containers with all the dependencies that the URL shortener needs:

$ cd goshort
$ sudo docker-compose up

Building from source

Requirements in order to build project from source are:

• Golang 1.13.4+
• Node.js 12.15+ with npm

Golang packages:

• github.com/gin-gonic/gin
• github.com/gin-contrib/cors
• github.com/jinzhu/gorm
• github.com/mattn/go-sqlite3

You can install them with go get <package> command, build backend and start it:

$ cd goshort/backend
$ go get <package>
$ go build -o <name> .
$ ./<name>

Main Node.js dependencies:

• react
• react-bootstrap
• react-dom
• react-router-dom
• react-scripts

You can install them with npm install command and then start the web interface:

$ cd goshort/web
$ npm install
$ npm start

Other important things

Make sure to create .env file inside web directory and add new React environment variable by name REACT_APP_API_URL, which is indicating backend API endpoint address. The default address is following:

REACT_APP_API_URL=http://localhost:8080/api

SQLite database creates its .db file only the first time the backend is started. To enable database recreation on every new start, change this part of code in main.go file from data.Create() to:

err = data.Recreate()
if err != nil {
    exception.FatalInternal(err)
}