README

A simple yet flexible implementation of a URL Shortner in Laravel.

Introduction

Integrate your own cusom URL shortener into your Laravel App, and track who visits what!

Installation

composer require bradietilley/laravel-shortify

Config and migrations should be published:

artisan vendor:publish --tag="shortify-config"
artisan vendor:publish --tag="shortify-migrations"

Documentation

Shortening URLs → Basic usage

Statically:

You can statically call the BradieTilley\Shortify\Shortify singleton to shorten urls:

$shortUrl = Shortify::make()->shorten($longUrl)->url; // https://app.com/s/Ws4BYCVLDDDh
$shortUrl = Shortify::url($longUrl)->url; //             https://app.com/s/5wHiKrKx5xV1

Dependency Injection:

The BradieTilley\Shortify\Shortify singleton can be dependency injected:

public function handle(Shortify $shortify): void
{
    $url = $shortify->shorten($this->invoice->getSignedUrl());

    echo $url->url; // https://app.com/s/xpLurjDkBATw
}

Shortening URLs → Shortening with an expiry

Sometimes your short URLs should be temporary. To achieve this, provide an expiry when shortening.

Viewing an expired URL will result in a BradieTilley\Shortify\Exceptions\ShortifyExpiredException exception.

$shortUrl = Shortify::make()->shorten($longUrl, expiry: now()->addDay());
$shortUrl = Shortify::url($longUrl, expiry: now()->addDay());

URLs → ShortifyUrl Model

The BradieTilley\Shortify\Models\ShortifyUrl model is the map between an original URL and a short URL (unique by code).

Original URL

The original URL can be fetched via the original_url property

$url = Shortify::url($longUrl);
$url->original_url; // same as $longUrl

Shortened URL

The shortened URL can be fetched via the url attribute

$url = Shortify::url($longUrl);
$url->url; // https://app.com/s/xpLurjDkBATw

The ShortifyUrl model overview:

• Fields:
• id → auto incrementing ID
• code → Unique URL slug/code
• original_url → The original URL (text length of 64 KB)
• visit_count → A running count of how many times this URL has been visited, for optimised querying (albeit, at the cost of continually updating this field)
• expired → Whether or not this URL has expired
• expires_at → Timestamp of when this URL expires
• created_at → Timestamp of when this URL was created
• updated_at → Timestamp of when this URL was updated (which will typically correspond to when it was last visited)
• Attributes:
  • url → A computed shortened URL using the code and the current route configuration.
• Relations:
  • visits → Has many ShortifyVisit models.

Visits ->ShortifyVisit Model

The BradieTilley\Shortify\Models\ShortifyVisit model represents a unique visit of a shortened url, tracking the user (if authenticated), IP address, and User Agent.

$url = ShortifyUrl::findByCode('my-short-url');

$url->visits; // Collection<ShortifyVisit>

The ShortifyVisit model overview:

• Fields:
  • id → auto incrementing ID
  • shortify_url_id → Foreign Key for ShortifyUrl
  • user_id → Foreign Key for the visited User
  • ip → IP Address of visitor
  • user_agent → User Agent of visitor
  • created_at → Timestamp of when the user visited the URL
• Relations:
  • user → The User who visited the URL
  • url → The ShortifyUrl visited

Customisation → Code Length

The code length defaults to 12, meaning the short URLs are always https://app.com/s/ followed by 12 alpha-numeric characters such as 50mqV1dfOrth.

This can be configured via the shortify.routing.code_length config variable.

Customisation → URL Path

The default is /s/{code} but in some cases this won't be what you're after.

This can be configured via the shortify.routing.uri config variable.

Customisation → URL Domain

The default is the default app domain but in some cases you may wish to use an alternative shorthand domain.

Note: You will need to register this other domain and configure the DNS as per usual -- this package does NOT provide that type of functionality.

This can be configured via the shortify.routing.domain config variable.

Customisation → Redirect Controller

The default is a rudimentary redirect that is handled by this package, but sometimes you may want to customise how the redirect is handled -- perhaps you want it to be returned in a JSON response that matches how JSON redirects are performed in your app.

This can be configured via the shortify.routing.route config variable.

Once configured, the original controller is inaccessible, and you now have full control over the handling of redirects.

Customisation → Models

As always with most Laravel packages, you can modify the models to use -- perhaps you want to track more information, add new helpers, etc. No worries.

This can be configured via the shortify.models.shortify_url and shortify.models.shortify_visit config variables which change the ShortifyUrl and ShortifyVisit models respectively.

Customisation → Turn off visitor tracking

Maybe you don't want tracking, or don't need it. Whatever the reasons are, you can disable the tracking of visits setting the shortify.feature.track_visits config variable to false.

This will prevent the shortify_urls.visit_count field from incrementing and will prevent the shortify_visits table from being populated.

Customisation → Everything else

The BradieTilley\Shortify\Shortify singleton can be replaced by another Shortify instance within your service provider. For example:

Extend Shortify:

namespace App\Support;

class Shortify extends \BradieTilley\Shortify\Shortify
{
    public function generateCode(ShortifyUrl $url): string
    {
        return Carbon::now()->format('Ymd').'-'.Str::random(6);
    }
}

Then register it:

$this->app->bind(\BradieTilley\Shortify\Shortify::class, \App\Support\Shortify::class);

Then use it:

echo Shortify::url($longUrl)->url; // 20241026-TWrCmX

Author

• Bradie Tilley