simple-shortener

Easily wrap a self-hosted URL shortening service around your personal site.

View on Docker Hub

Created with Fennel, Turbo, and Mithril.

Demo

Deploying

NOTE: You will need to configure auth_secret before the service will run. See Configuration.

With Docker¹:

docker run -d \
-p 80:80 \
--env-file config.env \
--mount source=shortener-db,target=/simple-shortener/db \
--mount type=bind,source=/PATH/TO/YOUR/SITE,target=/simple-shortener/static/landing_page,readonly \
jessiehildebrandt/simple-shortener

With Docker Compose¹:

simple-shortener:
  image: jessiehildebrandt/simple-shortener
  env_file: config.env
  ports:
    - 80:80
  volumes:
    - shortener-db:/simple-shortener/db
    - /PATH/TO/YOUR/SITE:/simple-shortener/static/landing_page:ro

volumes:
  shortener-db:

After deploying, you should be able to navigate your browser to <YOUR_DOMAIN> to view your site, or <YOUR_DOMAIN>/shorten to log in to the control panel. If you have TOTP auth enabled (on by default), check your Docker logs for a QR code to scan with your TOTP generator app of choice. If you disabled TOTP auth, you can log in by entering auth_secret as the passcode.

¹ You should probably avoid directly exposing the Turbo HTTP server as in these examples, and should instead opt to use a more robust server as a reverse-proxy.

Configuration

You can easily configure your deployment by supplying an environment variable file with your desired settings.

An example environment variable file is provided for use as a template.

Supported configuration options:

auth_secret (REQUIRED)

string

THIS VALUE NEEDS TO BE SET BEFORE THE SERVICE WILL START!

This is used to authenticate sessions for the shortener control panel and the REST API. Depending on configuration, this can either be used as a TOTP secret or as a password.

enable_control_panel

boolean

Whether or not a static control panel page for interacting with the shortening service will be exposed at /shorten.

Default true

enable_landing_page

boolean

Whether or not a static landing page will be served when not visiting shortened links or the control panel.

Default true

landing_page_index

string

The path to the file to use as the index for the landing page.

This only has an effect when enable_landing_page is set to true.

Default index.html

listen_port

number

The port that the HTTP server will listen on.

Default 80

query_limit

number

The maximum number of database entries that the API will return in a single query.

Default 100

session_max_length_hours

number

The duration (in hours) that an API session will be valid for once signed in, regardless of activity.

Default 24

session_max_idle_length_hours

number

The duration (in hours) that an API session will be valid for without any activity.

Default 1

use_secure_cookies

boolean

Whether or not to tag API session cookies with the Secure and SameSite=Strict attributes.'

Secure cookies expect your server to have HTTPS enabled, and will prevent the control panel and API from functioning over unsecured connections.

Default true

use_totp

boolean

Whether or not auth_secret will be used as a TOTP secret instead of a password.

If enabled, the server will print a QR code to stdout containing a standardized URL that you can scan with most TOTP generators.

(TOTP is recommended, but you may want to disable it if (e.g) your system cannot be synchronized to global time.)

Default true

API

The shortening service exposes a simple API at /shorten/api that you may consume from your own control panel¹, a browser extension, etc.

The API endpoints and response codes are documented in the docstrings of their respective handler modules.

¹ If you wish to replace the default control panel, you can provide your own by mounting it at /simple-shortener/static/control_panel.