#hashids

Create A URL Shortener With Golang And Couchbase NoSQL

Continuing down the road of Golang development I thought it would be a cool learning example to develop a URL shortener application similar to that of TinyURL or Bitly.  I think these are great examples because not only does it teach you how to develop a RESTful API that uses a datasource, but it also challenges you to think critically when it comes to the algorithms.

PreviouslyI had written…

Security by obscurity is never a good policy but there are still some legitimate reasons why you would want to hide your id’s. One good reason is that you don’t want to reveal how many users you perhaps have or at what rate your membership is growing. Making it difficult for the average website visitor to cycle through your id’s by just changing the URL is also important.

The following code…

Consider using "hashids" if you use integers and you want to generate links, but not expose your database key. http://www.hashids.org/coldfusion/

It works with one or more integers and you can specify the specific sort order and even repeat and integer multiple times.  There are lots of options so be sure to read the documentation.

In addition to ColdFusion, the library is available in JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Java, PHP, Perl, CoffeeScript, Objective-C, C++, Go, Lua, Elixir, Node.js and .NET. This makes it extremely easy to use with other languages and even dynamically generate IDs on the client-side.