Simple-URL-Shortener

Simple‑URL‑Shortener is a minimal, KISS‑compliant URL shortener written in vanilla PHP that supports both MySQL and SQLite backends. Its core purpose is to expose a lightweight API for creating, retrieving, and managing short links without the bloat of modern frameworks. The application exposes a web interface for users to register, log in, and create short URLs with optional comments. The comment field is the primary search aid; it allows developers to tag links for later retrieval, which can be leveraged in larger systems that need human‑readable metadata on short URLs.

Key Features

• Stateless PHP core – no external dependencies beyond the PHP runtime and a database driver.
• Dual‑database support – works out of the box with MySQL or SQLite, giving developers flexibility to choose a lightweight file‑based store for low‑traffic sites or a robust relational engine for production.
• User management – simple authentication with cookie‑based sessions (secure flag enforced on HTTPS). The first registered user becomes an admin, providing a quick path to enable link analytics or bulk operations.
• Comment‑driven search – every short URL can have an optional comment; the UI lists links grouped by user and searchable via keyword, making it useful for internal documentation or tracking campaigns.

Technical Stack

The application is intentionally unopinionated: it ships a single index.php that routes all requests through URL rewriting. The routing logic is simple: the path component becomes a query parameter (site) which is then resolved to either a short URL or a page. This design keeps the codebase small and easy to audit.

Core Capabilities & API

• REST‑style endpoints – While the UI is primarily HTML, the same logic can be reused to build a lightweight JSON API:
  • POST /?action=create – create a short link (url, optional short, comment).
  • GET /?site={code} – redirect to the original URL.
• Admin actions – List all users’ links, delete or edit entries, and export link data.
• Configuration – inc/config.php holds database credentials, base URL, and security flags. The file can be templated for Docker or CI pipelines.

Deployment & Infrastructure

The project is designed for self‑hosting on any LAMP or LEMP stack. A single PHP file per request means it scales linearly with CPU, and SQLite support allows deployment on edge devices or CI runners. For production workloads, the recommended setup is:

1. Docker – a lightweight image with PHP‑FPM and Nginx, mounting the source code as a volume.
2. High‑availability – duplicate instances behind a load balancer; the database layer is the single point of contention, so use replication or read‑replicas if needed.
3. Security – the app forces HTTPS for cookie transmission; it also denies access to .sqlite3 and .ht files via Nginx rules, protecting the database file from direct download.

Integration & Extensibility

The codebase exposes a small set of hooks:

• Custom routing – By modifying index.php, developers can add new query parameters or rewrite rules.
• Webhooks – The redirect handler (index.php?site=…) can be extended to trigger external callbacks (e.g., analytics services).
• Plugin skeleton – While not a full plugin system, the inc/ directory can house additional PHP modules that are included at runtime.
• API keys – Future forks could add an API key system for programmatic access, which would be trivial to implement given the existing routing logic.

Developer Experience

• Zero dependencies – No Composer, no Node.js. The entire project fits in a single Git repository with clear commit history.
• Documentation – The README covers installation, configuration, and web‑server rewrites; the code comments are minimal but consistent.
• Community – The project is dormant, but its simplicity invites forks; the original author welcomes improvements.
• Licensing – The repository is released under an MIT‑style license, allowing commercial use without attribution requirements.

Use Cases

1. Internal Documentation – Teams can create short, human‑readable links to wiki pages or code snippets and annotate them with comments for quick reference.
2. Marketing Campaigns – Developers can generate short URLs on‑the‑fly for A/B testing, attaching campaign identifiers as comments.
3. Edge Deployment – Because it supports SQLite, the shortener can run on IoT gateways or local servers where a full MySQL installation is impractical.
4. Educational Projects – Its bare‑bones architecture makes it an excellent teaching tool for PHP routing, session handling, and database CRUD operations.

Advantages Over Alternatives