Kogara

A simple, ugly, Go/Redis-backed URL shortener.

Naming

Kogara (小柄) is the result of extensive Google Translating variations of the word “short” into different languages, because that’s how I like to name my projects. Plus, Kogara sounds pretty damn cool.

Development Status

This is a hobby project designed to increase my own familiarity with Go, Redis, and Gin. I’m striving to have it become a stable, full-fledged project, but keep that in mind if you decide to use it.

Routes

/ is a simple homepage to shorten links.

/+/:id displays a simple counter of the times the link has loaded from the server. (It uses a 301 redirect, so browsers will typically aggressively cache the result)

/r/:id is the redirect itself.

/check/:id will return a JSON blob revealing the existence of a particular ID. Mainly implemented so if I decide to add custom URLs.

Current caveats

• At present solely generates sequential base62 link IDs.
• At present has no way to administer links beyond directly managing them in Redis.
• Does not confirm link existence, or even structure, so you may end up with some weird results.
• May be vulnerable to XSS, but most browsers reject execution of JavaScript unless it’s directly entered by the user into the address bar.