URL Shortener Service

A modern URL shortening service built with Python FastAPI backend and simple HTML/JavaScript frontend. This application demonstrates modern web development practices and serves as a platform for DevOps implementation exercises.

Application Components

Backend (FastAPI)

• RESTful API for URL shortening
• PostgreSQL database integration
• Rate limiting
• URL validation
• Analytics tracking

Frontend

• Simple and responsive design
• URL submission form
• QR code generation for shortened URLs
• Basic analytics display

Features

• URL shortening with custom alias support
• QR code generation
• Click tracking and analytics
• Rate limiting
• API documentation (Swagger/OpenAPI)

Technical Stack

• Backend: Python FastAPI
• Database: PostgreSQL
• Frontend: HTML, JavaScript, Bootstrap
• API Documentation: OpenAPI/Swagger
• Container: Docker
• Orchestration: Kubernetes
• Database Migration: Alembic

Local Development Setup

1. Backend:

   cd backend
   python -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate
   pip install -r requirements.txt
   uvicorn main:app --reload

2. Frontend:

   cd frontend
   python -m http.server 8080

API Endpoints

• POST /api/shorten - Create short URL
• GET /{short_id} - Redirect to original URL
• GET /api/stats/{short_id} - Get URL statistics
• GET /api/health - Health check endpoint

Database Schema

CREATE TABLE urls (
    id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    original_url TEXT NOT NULL,
    short_id VARCHAR(10) UNIQUE NOT NULL,
    created_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
    expires_at TIMESTAMP,
    custom_alias VARCHAR(50) UNIQUE
);

CREATE TABLE clicks (
    id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    url_id INTEGER REFERENCES urls(id),
    clicked_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
    referrer TEXT,
    user_agent TEXT
);

Minimum Tasks (Infra Creation)

• Provision infrastructure either on self managed K8s / EKS using terraform
• Set up a simple GitHub Actions or Jenkins pipeline to run Terraform commands (terraform fmt, validate, and plan).
• Automate Terraform execution with a pipeline trigger on push to a specific branch.
• Create Dockerfiles
• Set up multi-stage builds
• Configure environment variables
• Set up health check endpoints
• Configure basic logging

Target Tasks (Deployment)

• Refactor the Terraform code to use modules for reusability.
• Store Terraform state in an S3 bucket with DynamoDB for state locking.
• Write Deployment.yaml and service.yaml files for deployment on k8s.
• Use helm for deplyment using gitops
• Handle environment variables using k8s secrets

Stretch

• Setup Argo CD for automatic deplyoment
• Setup Promethues and grafana
• setup basic alerts