danielmichaels / tars.run

A simple URL shortener written in Go.

Tars.Run

A simple short link application backend written in Go.

Demo site: https://tars.run

Note

This site may have downtime and loss of data is possible. I recommend self-hosting this application if you require durability.

Installation

The prod version runs in a single docker container with a dependency on Litestream.

In order to use this project's Dockerfile, you'll need to understand how to use Litestream and fill out the appropriate environment variables.

Environment variables can be found in .env.example.

# create a .env
cp .env.example .env
# or feel free to use any other method to inject the required environment variables into your shell.

The application uses goose to perform database migrations. To bootstrap the database, you'll need to install goose and create a SQLite database file.

go get github.com/pressly/goose/v3/cmd/goose
mkdir -p data
touch data/shorty.db.up
task db:migration:up

In development, the application can be started using air. Simply run the air command and a hot-reloading webserver will be started. The migrations must be applied in order to create the tables.

# development
task dev

Note: hot-reloading requires air and templ

There is a Taskfile with a large number of commands.

Web version

How it works

This version of the application is self-contained using Go templates and embedded files. Adding new links is done via a POST request to the v1/links endpoint which saves it to the database and renders it in the template. All other endpoints are GET requests and accessible via the web pages / and /{hash}/analytics.

When developing, if adding new Tailwind classes you may be required to re-run the Tailwind compiler. To do that just run task tailwind which will output a minified CSS file named theme.css in assets/static/css. This is used in the assets/static/view/layout/base.templ file. Both Alpine.js and Tailwind are self-contained in this binary for portability and to reduce network calls.

All templates use templ as it provides type safety over Go's standard library template package.

Endpoints

Method	URL	Handler	Action	Authentication
GET	/	handleHome	Retrieves all links	False
GET	/:hash	handleRedirect	Retrieves a single link	False
POST	/v1/links	handleCreateLink	Creates a new link	False

Self Hosting

This application is designed to be deployed as a container.

The following environment variables are required to run this if using Litestream.

LITESTREAM_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=
LITESTREAM_ACCESS_KEY_ID=
DB_PATH=./data/data.db
LITESTREAM_BUCKET=
LITESTREAM_ENDPOINT=
LITESTREAM_RETENTION=72h
DB_SYNC_INTERVAL=60s
LITESTREAM_DB_NAME=

Refer to .env.example for more configuration options such as Social Media accounts and application name.

Stack

• go-chi
• Sqlite (with Litestream)
• templ

Development

You will require the following tools:

• templ
• air
• goose

License

Licenced under Apache 2.0, see LICENSE.