url-shortening-api-vercel is a URL shortener service. It is a serverless application that provides URL shortening and retrieval functionalities. Utilizing the Vercel infrastructure - Vercel Functions, Vercel KV (Redis), and Vercel Postgres, the application offers a high performance, efficient and scalable solution for creating, serving, and tracking short URLs that redirect to the original, longer URLs.

This project now uses Vercel because they are a single provider for all project infrastructure needs, including Vercel Functions, Vercel KV (Redis), and Vercel Postgres. Migrating to Vercel has reduced latency caused by historical Netlify/Supabase interactions and allowed for using Vercel KV (Redis) as a caching layer.

Please note, moving from Netlify Edge Functions to Vercel Functions reduces the number of function executions to 100k/month. If you need more executions, the legacy Netlify Edge version of this API may still be a better choice.

This replaces the legacy url-shortening-api-netlify-edge-supabase project due to a number of performance improvements.

• URL Shortening: Convert long URLs into short, manageable links.
• URL Validation: Ensures that only valid URLs with proper protocols are processed.
• Redirection: Automatically redirect users from the short URL to the original long URL.
• Latest Links Retrieval: Fetch the most recently shortened URLs.
• URL Count: Retrieve the total number of URLs shortened.
• API Version Information: Obtain the current version of the API.
• CORS Support: Handles Cross-Origin Resource Sharing to enable API access from different domains.
• Error Handling: Graceful error responses for various error scenarios.

• Node.js: JavaScript runtime environment
• Vercel: Hosting platform for serverless functions
• PostgreSQL (Vercel Postgres): Relational database for storing URL data
• Redis (Vercel KV): Key-Value store for caching
• formidable: Library for parsing form data
• valid-url: Utility for URL validation
• dotenv: Environment variable management

Before installing, ensure you have Node.js and npm (Node Package Manager) installed on your system. You can download and install Node.js from Node.js official website.

1. Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/samestrin/url-shortening-api-vercel.git
cd url-shortening-api-vercel

2. Install Dependencies

npm install

3. Set Up PostgreSQL Database

Create your Postgres database.

Run the SQL script to create necessary tables and insert initial data using the Vercel Storage interface.

4. Set Up KV (Redis)

Create your KV database.

5. Configure Environment Variables

Create a **.env** file in the root directory and add the following variables:

POSTGRES_URL=your_postgres_connection_string
KV_REST_API_URL=your_kv_rest_api_url
KV_REST_API_TOKEN=your_kv_rest_api_token
URLSHORT_URL_BASE=your_base_url (Example: http://frwrd.ing/)
URLSHORT_TRACK_CLICKS=true_or_false
URLSHORT_RESOLVE_HOSTNAME=true_or_false URLSHORT_DEFAULT_IP_ADDRESS_ID=default_ip_address_id URLSHORT_DEFAULT_HOSTNAME_ID=default_hostname_id
URLSHORT_DEFAULT_USER_ID=default_user_id

6. Deploy to Vercel

vercel deploy

Endpoint: /shorten Method: POST

Shorten a long URL and return the shortened URL.

• url: The URL to be shortened.

Use a tool like Postman or curl to make a request:

curl -X POST \
  https://localhost/shorten \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
  --data-urlencode 'url=https://www.google.com'

The server responds with:

{"shortUrl":"lqywv6P"}

Endpoint: /[shortId] Method: GET

Based on shortened URL, e.g. /lqywv6P HTTP 301 forward to a long url.

This endpoint is accessed by navigating directly to the shortened URL.

Use curl to make a request:

curl http://localhost/[shortId]

Endpoint: /latest Method: GET

Retrieve the latest URLs shortened.

This endpoint is accessed by navigating directly to /latest.

Use curl to make a request:

curl http://localhost/latest

Endpoint: /count Method: GET

Retrieve the number of URLs shortened.

This endpoint is accessed by navigating directly to /count.

Use curl to make a request:

curl http://localhost/count

Endpoint: /version Method: GET

Retrieve the current version of the API.

This endpoint is accessed by navigating directly to /version.

Use curl to make a request:

curl http://localhost/version

The server responds with:

{
    "name": "url-shortening-api-vercel",
    "version": "0.0.2",
    "description": "url-shortening-api-vercel is a URL shortener service using the Vercel infrastructure - Vercel Functions, Vercel KV (Redis), and Vercel Postgres.",
    "author": "Sam Estrin",
    "homepage": "https://github.com/samestrin/url-shortening-api-vercel#readme"
}

The server responds with appropriate CORS headers such as Access-Control-Allow-Origin.

The API handles errors gracefully and returns appropriate error responses:

• 400 Bad Request: Invalid request parameters.
• 404 Not Found: Resource not found.
• 405 Method Not Allowed: Invalid request method (not GET or POST).
• 500 Internal Server Error: Unexpected server error.

Contributions to this project are welcome. Please fork the repository and submit a pull request with your changes or improvements.

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.