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 scratch docker image is <6 MB (compressed), the alpine one is <10 MB (compressed), and it uses <15 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, pronunciation) is the Bangla word for small. URL means, well... URL. So the name simply means Small URL.

Demo

Link: https://chhoto-url-demo.sayantansantra.com
Password: chhoto-url-demo-pass

Note:

• The database is cleared every 15 minutes, so don't use it for anything other than testing.
• If you host a public instance of Chhoto URL, please let me know, and I'll add it to the README.

Features

• Shortens URLs of any length to a randomly generated link.
• Automatic expiry of links after a chosen time.
• (Optional) Allows you to specify the shortened URL instead of the generated one. (It's 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 redirection 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.
• Short links can be edited after creation.
• QR codes can be generated for easy sharing.
• Supports operation using API key, and lets the user provide hashed password and API key.
• Has a mobile friendly UI, and automatic dark mode.
• Can serve a custom landing page, if needed.
• Has a public mode, where anyone can add links without authentication. Deleting or listing available links will need admin access using the password. It's also possible to completely disable the frontend. It's also possible to force an expiry time for public instances, which might be useful.
• 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 with a provided compose file.
• Backend written in Rust using Actix Web, and 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 a reverse proxy such as 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 some basic logging of configs.
• 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 buy me a coffee, you can message me through GitHub discussions or mail me.

Screenshots

Installation and configuration

See here.

Instructions for CLI usage

See here.

Related software

See here.

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.
• Although it's unlikely, it's possible that your database is mangled after some update. For mission critical use cases, it's recommended to keep regular versioned backups of the database, and sticking to a minor release tag e.g. 5.8.
• If you intend to have more than a few thousand short links, it's strongly recommended that you use the UID slug_style with a slug_length of 16 or more. Otherwise, generating new links will start to fail after a while.