liteshort/README.md

# liteshort
liteshort is a link shortener designed with lightweightness, user and sysadmin-friendliness, privacy, and configurability in mind.

Click [here](https://ls.ikl.sh) for a live demo.

*Why liteshort over other URL shorteners?*

liteshort is designed with the main goal of being lightweight. It does away with all the frills of other link shorteners and allows the best of the basics at a small resource price. liteshort uses under 20 MB of memory idle, per worker. liteshort has an easy-to-use API and web interface. liteshort doesn't store any more information than necessary: just the long and short URLs. It does not log the date of creation, the remote IP, or any other information.

liteshort uses Python 3, [Flask](http://flask.pocoo.org/), SQLite3, and [uwsgi](https://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) for the backend. 
The frontend is a basic POST form using [PureCSS](https://purecss.io).

![liteshort screenshot](https://fs.ikl.sh/selif/4cgndb6e.png)

## Installation
This installation procedure assumes that you plan to installing using a web server reverse proxy through a unix socket. This guide is loosely based upon DigitalOcean's [Flask/uWSGI/nginx guide](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-serve-flask-applications-with-uswgi-and-nginx-on-ubuntu-18-04).
Before installing, you must the following or your distribution's equivalent must be installed:
* python3-pip 
* python3-dev 
* python3-setuptools
* python3-venv
* build-essential

Start in the directory you wish to install to and modify to fit your installation. It is recommended to use a user specifically for liteshort and the www-data group for your installation folder.

```sh
git clone https://github.com/132ikl/liteshort
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip3 install -r requirements.txt uwsgi
```

Edit `liteshort.ini` and `liteshort.service` as seen fit. Then edit `config.yml` according to the [Configuration](#configuration) section.

Finally,
```sh
cp liteshort.service /usr/lib/systemd/system/
systemctl enable liteshort
systemctl start liteshort
```

liteshort is now accessible through a reverse proxy. The socket file is created in the install path.

## Configuration
The configuration file has an explanation for each option. This section will detail the mandatory options to be set before the program is able to be started.

`admin_hashed_password` or `admin_password`
* These must be set in order to use the API. If you do not care about the API, simply set `disable_api` to true.
As to not store the API password in cleartext, `admin_hashed_password` is preferred over `admin_password`. Run `securepass.sh` in order to generate the password hash. Set `admin_hashed_password` to the output of the script, excluding the username header at the beginning of the hash.
Note that using admin_hashed_password is more resource-intensive than `admin_password`, so the API will be noticeably slower when using `admin_hashed_password`.

`secret_key`
* This is used for cookies in order to store messages between requests. It should be a randomized key 12-16 characters, comprised of letters, number, and symbols. A standard password from a generator works fine.


## API
In order to create a new short URL, simply make a POST request with the form data `long` set to your long link and, optionally, set `short` to your short link.
Everything other than creation of links requires BasicAuth using the username and password defined in the configuration file. To use the following commands, set `api` to the command in the form data of your request.
* `list` and `listshort`
    * Lists all links the the database, sorted by short links.
* `listlong`
    * Lists all links in the database, sorted by long links.
* `delete`
    * Deletes a URL. In the form data, set `short` to the short link you want to delete, or set `long` to delete all short links that redirect to the provided long link.

### Example Request
```
curl -u [admin_username]:[admin_password] \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  -d "api=delete" \
  -d "short=[short]" \
  [url]
```

## Using a reverse proxy
The following are barebones examples of an nginx proxy for liteshort, meaning it doesn't have SSL or anything fancy. You may also use a non-nginx webserver by making a config equivalent for it based upon the following configurations. Make sure your webserver is serving the /static/ folder. While liteshort can serve the folder, webservers are much more efficient at serving static files.

### On domain root


```
server {

    listen 80;

    server_name example.com;
    
    location ^~ /static/  {
         include  /etc/nginx/mime.types;
         root /usr/local/liteshort/;
    }

    location / {
        include uwsgi_params;
        uwsgi_pass unix:/path/to/liteshort/liteshort.sock;
    }
}
```

### On a subdomain
First, make sure `site_domain` and `subdomain` options are set in config.yml. If you want the web interface on a subdomain, but the actual shortlinks on the main domain, as seen on the [demo site](https://ls.ikl.sh), use a configuration akin to the following. Make sure that anything you want to happen before liteshort, like a homepage on /, has its location block BEFORE the rewrite block. Nginx goes in numerical order of location blocks, so the rewrite location block will redirect everything on / to liteshort if not the last block.

```
server {

    listen 80;

    server_name subdomain.example.com;

    location / {
        include uwsgi_params;
        uwsgi_pass unix:/path/to/liteshort/liteshort.sock;
    }
}

server {

    listen 80;
 
    server_name example.com;
    
    location ^~ /static/  {
         include  /etc/nginx/mime.types;
         root /usr/local/liteshort/;
    }
    
    location / {
        rewrite /example/subdomain.example(.+) /$1 break;
        include uwsgi_params;
        uwsgi_pass unix:/usr/local/liteshort/liteshort.sock;
    }
}
```