🔗 Pokole

Pokole is a simple and fast URL shortener that uses NodeJS and PostgreSQL.

🤔 Meaning

Pokole stands for 'short' in Hawaiian.

💻 Features

• Simplicity
• Ease of use
• In-depth statistics
• Written in TypeScript to ensure fast and bug-free code

📝 Requirements

• Node.js (12 or newer)
• node-gyp (required for building bcrypt)
• PostgreSQL (latest)

🔨 Usage

Here's an easy-to-follow tutorial:

• Install Node, node-gyp and PostgreSQL
• Create a new folder and install the package inside via npm (npm install pokole) or yarn (yarn add pokole)
• Create a JavaScript file inside the folder (e.g. server.js)
• Import the Pokole class from the package, create a new instance of the class, provide the required configuration and call the .start() function! You can find a sample script below:

// We import the Pokole class from the Pokole package
const { Pokole } = require('pokole');

// You need to provide an object containing crucial information for the package, so we define it here 
const config = {
    // The database connection information
    db: { 
        // The database user
        user: 'alexthemaster',
        // The password used by the PostgreSQL user
        password: 'eee23EfgZ',
        // The URL PostgreSQL can be accessed from
        host: 'localhost',
        // The name of the database to use from PostgreSQL
        database: 'pokole',
        // The port PostgreSQL uses (defaults to 5432)
        port: 5432
    },
    // The URL the front-end of Pokole can be accessed from
    frontURL: 'localhost',
    // The URL the back-end of Pokole can be accessed from
    backURL: 'localhost:8080',
    server: {
        //  The port the front-end part of Pokole should run on, (defaults to 80)
        port: 80,
        // The port the back-end part of Pokole should run on, (defaults to 8080)
        backendPort: 8080
    },
    // The JWT (JSON Web Token) secret you want to use - make sure to keep this private, as this is what's used to encrypt user tokens
    jwtSecret: '33HdAiM$4zGs',
    // Whether or not registration is enabled, defaults to true
    registration: true
};

// We create a new Pokole instance, provide it with the required options and call the start function
new Pokole(config).start();

⚠ We recommend using a process manager such as PM2 to keep the script running!

📂 Hosting Static Files

If you want to host static files alongside Pokole, create a folder called static in the folder above and Pokole will serve the files inside this folder.

The default static files can be found here. Don't forget to include a 404 folder with an index.html file (this is where users get redirected if a short URL does not exist!)

Pokole-Web is a webpage you can use to manage your URLs.

🕸 Routes / API

Endpoint	Type	Headers	Description	Returns (JSON)	Requires authentication
/register	GET		Check if registration is possible	enabled: boolean	No
/register	POST	email, username, password	Register an account	success: string | error: string	No
/login	POST	user: username | email, password	Login to an existing account	{ token: string, expiresIn: number } | error: string	No
/shorten	POST	Authorization: Bearer token, URL, custom?	Shorten an URL	{ success: string, URL: link } | error: string	Yes
/me/links	GET	Authorization: Bearer token	Returns an array containing the list of your shortened URL's and and array of statistics for it	{ longURL: link, shortURL: link, created_on: date, stats: [] }	Yes

Legend: ? means the header is optional; | means OR; the string after : in the Returns column is the type of the returned object

Note: the token is only valid for an hour, so you will have to request a new one after that!