URLed

URLed is an open-source self-hosted lightweight URL shortener server written in Go

What URLed is built on

• Go 1.22
  • Fiber (HTTP web framework)
  • Gorm (ORM)
• SQLite

Why did I build this?

I built URLed because I was sick of so many other self-hosted URL shorteners being based on PHP and being hard to set up. Even those that had Docker images available didn't seem to offer one compatible with Raspberry Pi 2 and Zero, which use ARMv6. I wanted a URL shortener I could run without much setup and self-host on super minimal hardware.

Getting Started

Minimum Requirements

URLed is available for these operating systems/architectures:

• Linux (386)
• Linux (amd64)
• Linux (arm64)
• Linux (armv7)
• Linux (armv6)
• Linux (armv5)
• FreeBSD (386)
• FreeBSD (amd64)
• FreeBSD (armhf)
• FreeBSD (arm64)
• MacOS (amd64)
• MacOS (arm64)
• Windows (amd64)
• Windows (arm64)

URLed uses ~<20MB of RAM when running (in my testing), and the binary is <20MB in size.

I want to make this project available to run on whatever hardware you have, so if you don't see your architecture listed above, please open an issue and I will try to add support for it.

Installation

Create a file called .env in the same directory as where your binary will go with the following contents:

BASE_URL=[your base URL]

Note: Make sure you include the protocol (http/https) in the base URL

Stable

Download the binary for your architecture from the releases page and put it in the same directory as your .env file.

If you have an issue in UNIX-style OSes with an "access denied" error when you run it, run the following command to add execution permission and then try again:

chmod +x ./[your URLed executable]

Unstable

If you want to run the latest version of URLed, you can clone the repository and build the binary yourself.

go build ./cmd/urled

Usage

To start the server, run the following command:

$ ./[your URLed executable] -server

The server will run on port 4567. Your shortened URLs will only be available at your base URL if you configure traffic at that URL to be forwarded to the server at port 4567.

Adding/Removing Shortened URLs

• -add [long url] - Shorten a new URL
• -remove [short url suffix] - Remove a URL
• -remove-long [long url] - Remove all instances of a URL
• -list - List all URLs being shortened

Note: You can modify URLs being served by an already running server by opening a new terminal window and running the binary separately using these flags

Future Plans

Currently the project is in it's infancy, but I am planning on adding these features in the future:

• Add a web interface for managing URLs
• Docker image
• Add support for custom short URLs
• Add support for URL expiration
• Add support for URL analytics
• Install as a background service that runs on boot
• Automatic updates

License

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