URL Shortener

A production-style URL shortener with JWT auth, Redis caching, Postgres persistence, rate limiting, and a React dashboard for link analytics.

Highlights

• JWT-based auth for creating short links
• Redis cache with TTL for hot redirects
• Postgres-backed analytics and optional link expiration
• Per-IP rate limiting on POST /shorten
• Nginx reverse proxy + Docker Compose stack

Tech Stack

• Backend: C++ (Drogon)
• Frontend: React + Vite
• Data: Postgres, Redis
• Infra: Docker, Nginx
• Load testing: k6

Quickstart (Docker Compose) This brings up the backend, database, cache, Nginx, and monitoring stack.

cd shortener
docker compose up --build

Default endpoints:

• App (via Nginx): http://localhost
• Redis: localhost:6379

Frontend (Vite Dev Server) Run the UI separately during development.

cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev

API Reference (Core)

• POST /register Body: { "email": "user@example.com", "password": "Passw0rd!" }
• POST /login Body: { "email": "user@example.com", "password": "Passw0rd!" }
• POST /shorten Header: Authorization: Bearer <token> Body: { "long_url": "https://example.com", "ttl_seconds": 3600 }
• GET /{short_code} Redirects to the original URL (302), returns 410 if expired
• GET /analytics/{short_code} Returns click count and timestamps

Environment Variables (Backend)

• PORT (default 5555)
• DB_HOST, DB_PORT, DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASS, DB_SSLMODE
• REDIS_URL or REDIS_PUBLIC_URL (preferred)
• REDIS_HOST, REDIS_PORT, REDIS_USER, REDIS_PASSWORD
• JWT_SECRET (use 16+ chars in production)
• FRONTEND_ORIGIN (extra CORS allowlist entry)

Load Testing (k6) The script registers a user, logs in, creates one link, and then hammers reads.

k6 run load_test.js

Repo Structure

• shortener/ Backend service, Docker Compose stack, monitoring, and DB init scripts
• frontend/ React UI
• load_test.js k6 performance test
• Dockerfile Root container build for the backend

Notes

• The short link generator is deterministic; collisions are retried with a modified seed.
• POST /shorten is rate-limited to 60 requests per minute per IP.