h1. Make your own URL shortener in 3 minutes

Shortenr is a 14-line web application allowing you to have your own private URL shortener.

h2. Tools/services

• Sinatra as web framework
• DataMapper as ORM
• Heroku.com for the free hosting
• ZerigoDNS for DNS

h2. Prerequisites

• A free, properly configured account on Heroku.com
• A (ideally short) domain name, configured to point to Zerigo DNS, as explained on: http://www.zerigo.com/docs/managed-dns/nameservers

And to test it locally:

• Ruby
• Some gems: @sudo gem install sinatra dm-core dm-validations dm-aggregates do_mysql@

h2. Usage

h3. Configure the app on Heroku

bc. git clone http://github.com/njacobeus/shortenr.git heroku create {name_of_your_shortener} heroku addons:add custom_domains heroku domains:add {your_domain_name} heroku addons:add zerigo_dns git push heroku master

h3. Create the "shortener" database locally and send it to Heroku

Either with Datamapper:

Add the line "DataMapper.auto_migrate" in shortener.rb Launch it once locally (ruby shortener.rb) and stop it ** Remove the line

Or manually in your MySQL client: you only need an "urls" table with the 3 fields (id, target, short) as described in shortener.rb.

Then send it to Heroku:

bc. heroku db:push mysql://root@localhost/shortener

h3. Submit URLs to shorten via your "secret" access URL:

"http://{your_domain_name}/_privatesubmit?url={url_to_add}":http://{your_domain_name}/_privatesubmit?url={url_to_add}

(you can obviously change that URL to make it a little bit more secret)

h2. Demo

You can test it in action on http://tu.tl ; there is no public page, so you have to enter new URLs via

"http://tu.tl/_privatesubmit?url={url_to_add}":http://tu.tl/_privatesubmit?url={url_to_add}