Flask URL-Shortener

Features

• Shortens URLs to a default 3-digit prefix using random character and letter combination.
• Checks if the shortened URL already exists and attempt to re-run the code-generator until it finds an available combination.
• All data is stored in a single MySQL table.
• Case-sensitive. The database distinguishes between upper and lower characters.
• A Stats page lists all the shortened URLs, and shows how many times a target link has been redirected.
• There is a button to automatically copy the shortened URL to clipboard.
• Has an option to use Recaptcha to prevent spambots.

Setup

• Create a virtualenv
• Install the requirements pip install -r requirements.txt
• Update settings.py with your own MySQL credentials
• (Or add and edit local_settings.py, which overwrites fields in settings.py)
• Create the database in MySQL CREATE DATABASE shortener;
• Run python create_db.py to setup the table
• Lastly, alter the database in MySQL to make characters case-sensitive:

ALTER DATABASE shortener CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin; ALTER TABLE url CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin;