mek.lu

This is the source code that powers the http://mek.lu/ URL shortening service. The service itself is intended to be a private one, to be used by the service administrator.

License

The source code is licensed CC0. This means you can do practically anything you want with the source code. The full text of the license can be found in the COPYING.txt file in the repository root or online at https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

Features

• Shorten URLs!
• Simple filesystem layout
  • URLs are stored in a filesystem tree in the configured path
  • /e/ contains external tree, /i/ contains internal tree
  • Examples:
    • http://mek.lu/e/aeiou -> /e/aei/aeiou
      • http://www.nasa.gov/moonbasealpha/
    • http://mek.lu/marvelous -> /i/mar/marvelous
      • http://meklu.org/imgs/gib.svg

Distinction between URL types

The difference between external URLs and base service URLs is mostly semantic. An upcoming URL insertion utility, however, could be configured to automatically insert URLs with certain host parts into the internal tree.

Request Flow

1. Client sends a request
2. Server receives the request
3. Simple processing on the GET
   • Index exception: / -> /index.html
     • Notable feature: a GET request for /index.html will still be interpreted as a regular request, and will hence be read from /i/ind/index.html. Putting an actual HTML file in this path will merely output the first line in the file - usually the DOCTYPE declaration - as the Location header, and you probably wouldn't want that to happen.
   • robots.txt exception: /robots.txt
   • Pick filesystem tree: /e/ for external URLs, /i/ for base service URLs
   • Harsh directory traversal mitigation
     • 400 any silly request
4. Return the fun stuff!
   • 302 the user to the right place