Anchr

Anchr is a lightweight, self‑hosted toolbox that bundles three core web utilities—link shortening, bookmark management, and encrypted image hosting—into a single Express‑based service. At its heart, Anchr exposes a RESTful API that mirrors the UI experience: endpoints for creating short links (POST /api/shorten), managing collections of bookmarks (GET/POST /api/bookmarks), and uploading images (POST /api/images). Each resource is persisted in a PostgreSQL database, accessed through the knex query builder. The application’s front‑end is a single‑page React app built with Vite, which communicates with the API via Axios. The server also serves static assets from a /public directory and injects an OAuth 2 client configuration that supports Google, Facebook, and generic OpenID Connect providers.

Technical Stack

Anchr’s codebase is intentionally small—under 5 kB of source after minification—making it trivial to audit and modify. The server follows a classic MVC pattern: routers → controllers → services → repositories, with dependency injection via simple factory functions. All secrets (DB password, OAuth client IDs) are read from environment variables, and the Dockerfile exposes only a single port (3000), ready for deployment behind a reverse proxy.

Core Capabilities & APIs

• Short Links – POST /api/shorten accepts a long URL and optional custom slug; returns a short URL that redirects via a catch‑all route. Internally, URLs are stored with a hash field (generated by crypto.randomBytes(4).toString('hex')) and a visits counter. A background job (node‑cron) updates visit statistics and purges stale links.
• Bookmarks – CRUD endpoints (/api/bookmarks) support tagging, description, and categorization into collections. The API returns a full bookmark tree on GET /api/bookmarks, enabling instant UI rendering.
• Image Uploads – POST /api/images accepts multipart form data. The server streams the file to disk, stores metadata (size, MIME type, upload timestamp), and returns a signed URL that the client can use to download. If the client sends an encryption key, the image is stored encrypted; decryption occurs on the fly when the file is served.
• Safe Browsing – Every link creation triggers an async lookup against Google’s Safe Browsing API; malicious URLs are rejected with a 400 status code.
• OAuth – The /auth routes use passport.js strategies for Google, Facebook, and generic OIDC. Tokens are stored in the database and refreshed automatically.

Deployment & Infrastructure

Anchr is container‑first. The official Docker image (muety/anchr) pulls the latest Node.js LTS, installs dependencies, and starts the Express server. The image exposes only port 3000, so a lightweight reverse proxy (NGINX, Caddy) can add TLS termination and HTTP/2. For scaling, the stateless nature of the API means you can run multiple replicas behind a load balancer; PostgreSQL is the only shared state, so standard replication or Patroni setups work out of the box. The Prometheus endpoint allows you to monitor latency, request counts, and error rates; Grafana dashboards can be built from the exported metrics.

Integration & Extensibility

• Browser Extensions – The Chrome/Firefox extension ships as a separate package (webext) that communicates with the API via chrome.runtime.sendMessage. It can be embedded into any web page as a bookmarklet, providing “Save to Anchr” functionality without leaving the current tab.
• ShareX Integration – ShareX’s “Custom Uploaders” can point to the /api/images endpoint, automatically encrypting images client‑side before upload.
• Telegram Bot – The @AnchrBot forwards messages to the API; developers can hook into bot commands (e.g., /shorten, /bookmark) to automate workflows.
• Webhook Support – While not yet fully documented, the API can be extended to emit events (link created, image uploaded) via webhooks. A simple POST /api/webhook endpoint can be added to trigger downstream services.
• Plugin System – Currently minimal, but the architecture allows adding new routes or middleware without touching core code. For example, a custom analytics plugin could hook into the request lifecycle.

Developer Experience

Anchr ships with comprehensive TypeScript type definitions for both client and server, making it easy to integrate