Chhoto URL

What is it?

A simple selfhosted URL shortener with no unnecessary features. Simplicity and speed are the main foci of this project. The docker image is ~6 MB (compressed), and it uses <5 MB of RAM under regular use.

Don't worry if you see no activity for a long time. I consider this project to be complete, not dead. I'm unlikely to add any new features, but I will try and fix every bug you report. I will also try to keep it updated in terms of security vulnerabilities.

If you feel like a feature is missing, please let me know by creating an issue using the "feature request" template.

But why another URL shortener?

Most URL shorteners are either bloated with unnecessary features, or are a pain to set up. Even fewer are written with simplicity and lightness in mind. When I saw the simply-shorten project (linked below), I really liked the idea but thought that it missed some features. Also, I didn't like the fact that a simple app like this had a ~200 MB docker image (mostly due to the included java runtime). So, I decided to rewrite it in Rust and add some features to it that I thought were essential (e.g. hit counting).

What does the name mean?

Chhoto (ছোট, IPA: /tʃʰoʈo/) is the Bangla word for small. URL means, well... URL. So the name simply means Small URL.

Features

• Shortens URLs of any length to a randomly generated link.
• (Optional) Allows you to specify the shortened URL instead of the generated one. (It's surprisingly missing in a surprising number of alternatives.)
• Opening the shortened URL in your browser will instantly redirect you to the correct long URL. (So no stupid redirecting pages.)
• Super lightweight and snappy. (The docker image is only ~6MB and RAM uasge stays under 5MB under normal use.)
• Counts number of hits for each short link in a privacy respecting way i.e. only the hit is recorded, and nothing else.
• Has a mobile friendly UI.
• Has a public mode, where anyone can add links without authentication. Deleting or listing available links will need admin access using the password.
• Allows setting the URL of your website, in case you want to conveniently generate short links locally.
• Links are stored in an SQLite database.
• Available as a Docker container.
• Backend written in Rust using Actix, frontend written in plain HTML and vanilla JS, using Pure CSS for styling.
• Uses very basic authentication using a provided password. It's not encrypted in transport. I recommend using something like caddy to encrypt the connection by SSL.

Bloat that will not be implemented

• Tracking or spying of any kind. The only logs that still exist are errors printed to stderr and the basic logging (only warnings) provided by the env_logger crate.
• User management. If you need a shortener for your whole organization, either run separate containers for everyone or use something else.
• Cookies, newsletters, "we value your privacy" popups or any of the multiple other ways modern web shows how anti-user it is. We all hate those, and they're not needed here.
• Paywalls or messages begging for donations. If you want to support me (for whatever reason), you can message me through GitHub issues.

Screenshot

Usage

Using docker compose (Recommended method)

There is a sample compose.yaml file in this repository. It contains everything needed for a basic install. You can use it as a base, modifying it as needed. Run it with

docker compose up -d

If you're using a custom location for the db_url, make sure to make that file before running the docker image, as otherwise a directory will be created in its place, resulting in possibly unwanted behavior.

Building and running with docker

docker run method

0. (Only if you really want to) Build the image for the default x86_64-unknown-linux-musl target:

docker build . -t chhoto-url

For building on arm64 or arm/v7, use the following:

docker build . -t chhoto-url --build-arg target=<desired-target>

Make sure that the desired target is a musl one, since the docker image is built from scratch. For cross-compilation, take a look at the Makefile. It builds and pushes for linux/amd64, linux/aarch64 and linux/arm/v7 architectures. For any other architectures, open a discussion, and I'll try to help you out.

1. Run the image

docker run -p 4567:4567
    -e password="password"
    -d chhoto-url:latest

1.a Make the database file available to host (optional)

touch ./urls.sqlite
docker run -p 4567:4567 \
    -e password="password" \
    -v ./urls.sqlite:/urls.sqlite \
    -e db_url=/urls.sqlite \
    -d chhoto-url:latest

1.b Further, set the URL of your website (optional)

touch ./urls.sqlite
docker run -p 4567:4567 \
    -e password="password" \
    -v ./urls.sqlite:/urls.sqlite \
    -e db_url=/urls.sqlite \
    -e site_url="https://www.example.com" \
    -d chhoto-url:latest

You can set the redirect method to Permanent 308 (default) or Temporary 307 by setting the redirect_method variable to TEMPORARY or PERMANENT (it's matched exactly). By default, the auto-generated links are adjective-name pairs. You can use UIDs by setting the slug_style variable to UID. You can also set the length of those slug by setting the slug_length variable. It defaults to 8, and a minimum of 4 is supported.

To enable public mode, set public_mode to Enable. With this, anyone will be able to add links. Listing existing links or deleting links will need admin access using the password.

By default, the server sends no Cache-Control headers. You can set custom cache_control_header to send your desired headers. It must be a comma separated list of valid RFC 7234 §5.2 headers. For example, you can set it to no-cache, private to disable caching. It might help during testing if served through a proxy.

Instructions for CLI usage

The application can be used from the terminal using something like curl. In all the examples below, replace http://localhost:4567 with where your instance of chhoto-url is accessible.

If you have set up a password, first do the following to get an authentication cookie and store it in a file.

curl -X post -d "<your-password>" -c cookie.txt http://localhost:4567/api/login

You should receive "Correct password!" if the provided password was correct. For any subsequent request, please add -b cookie.txt to provide authentication.

To add a link, do

curl -X POST -d '{"shortlink":"<shortlink>", "longlink":"<longlink>"}' http://localhost:4567/api/new

Send an empty <shortlink> if you want it to be auto-generated. The server will reply with the generated shortlink.

To get a list of all the currently available links as json, do

curl http://localhost:4567/api/all

To delete a link, do

curl -X DELETE http://localhost:4567/api/del/<shortlink>

The server will send a confirmation.

You can get the version of chhoto-url the server is running using curl http://localhost:4567/api/version and get the siteurl using curl http://localhost:4567/api/siteurl.

Disable authentication

If you do not define a password environment variable when starting the docker image, authentication will be disabled.

This if not recommended in actual use however, as it will allow anyone to create new links and delete old ones. This might not seem like a bad idea, until you have hundreds of links pointing to illegal content. Since there are no logs, it's impossible to prove that those links aren't created by you.

Notes

• It started as a fork of simply-shorten.
• The list of adjectives and names used for random short url generation is a modified version of this list used by docker.