LinkShort

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A production-ready URL shortener — FastAPI backend, JWT auth, click tracking, React 19 SPA, SQLite.

LinkShort (repository: FastAPI-url) is a complete URL-shortening service with a Python/FastAPI API, JWT-based authentication, per-user link management, click statistics, and a served single-page application frontend.

Stack: FastAPI (Python) · SQLAlchemy · SQLite · JWT (python-jose) · React 19 SPA (static files served by FastAPI) · pytest

Highlights

• Full auth flow — register → login → JWT bearer tokens; /auth/me returns the current user
• 6-character short codes — cryptographically random (secrets), with collision retry
• Click tracking — every redirect increments the click counter
• Link expiration — optional expires_in_seconds per link; expired links answer 410 Gone while stats stay viewable
• Per-user URLs — /urls/my lists your links; deletes are owner-scoped
• 302 redirects — /urls/r/{code} redirects to the target with a click recorded
• Public stats — /urls/{code}/stats returns target + click count
• SPA serving — FastAPI mounts the built React app and falls back to index.html for client-side routing
• CORS open — allow_origins=["*"] for development

Tech stack

Layer	Technology
API	FastAPI (app = FastAPI(title="URL Shortener", version="1.0.0"))
ORM	SQLAlchemy (Base.metadata.create_all on startup)
Database	SQLite
Auth	JWT bearer tokens (python-jose)
Password hashing	app/auth.py (hashed, never stored plaintext)
Frontend	React 19 SPA in backend/static/
Tests	pytest (tests/test_api.py)

API surface

Method	Path	Auth	Description
POST	/auth/register	—	Create account, receive JWT
POST	/auth/login	—	Authenticate, receive JWT
GET	/auth/me	Bearer	Current user profile
POST	/urls/shorten	Bearer	Shorten a URL
GET	/urls/my	Bearer	List your URLs (newest first)
GET	/urls/{code}/stats	—	Public click stats
DELETE	/urls/{code}	Bearer	Delete your URL (owner-scoped)
GET	/urls/r/{code}	—	302 redirect + click count
GET	/health	—	Liveness probe

Repository layout

FastAPI-url/
├── app/
│   ├── main.py            # FastAPI app, CORS, SPA serving
│   ├── auth.py            # JWT creation/verification, password hashing
│   ├── database.py        # SQLAlchemy engine + session
│   ├── models.py          # User, URL models
│   ├── schemas.py         # Pydantic schemas (UserCreate, Token, URLOut, URLStats)
│   ├── config.py          # Settings
│   └── routers/
│       ├── auth_router.py # /auth/* endpoints
│       └── urls.py        # /urls/* endpoints
├── backend/static/        # Built React SPA (served by FastAPI)
├── tests/
│   └── test_api.py        # API integration tests
└── ...

Short-code generation

def gen_short() -> str:
    chars = string.ascii_letters + string.digits
    return ''.join(secrets.choice(chars) for _ in range(6))

6 characters from a 62-char alphabet ≈ 5.7×10¹⁰ combinations; collisions are checked and retried against the database.

Related pages

• Getting Started — local setup and first run
• API Reference — every endpoint with requests/responses
• Deployment — Docker, environments, production notes