PIKL is a URL shortener

Introduction

If given a long URL, this app generates a shortened URL, stores it in a table, and becomes a redirecter for the new shortened URL.

Built with

• PHP
• Apache
• MySQL
• phpunit

For more info about
my thought processes
scroll down to the
project checklist.

Algorithm for URL shortening

I decided to not make hashes for the URLs. The shortened URLs have a human readable mix of consonants and vowels to make them easier to remember and say. The shortened URLs end in a two-digit suffix. The URL shortener function checks the existing db to avoid a collision with existing shortened URLs. There are still over 500 million urls possible before running out of combinations.

SQL db Schema

Deploy notes for the database (MySQL). The app uses three tables:

sessions

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS sessions (
    session_id  serial,
    user_id     int NOT NULL,
    date        timestamp
);

users

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS users (
    user_id     serial,
    email       varchar(255) UNIQUE NOT NULL,
    last_reset  timestamp,
    name        varchar(60),
    type        varchar(12) DEFAULT 'free',
    created     timestamp DEFAULT '2020-01-01 11:11:11',
    password    varchar(32)
);

links

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS links (
    link_id     serial,
    session_id  int,
    longurl     varchar(1000) NOT NULL,
    short       varchar(40) UNIQUE
);

Next action:

[ ] SANITIZER is too aggressive: sophisticated URLs from Amazon no longer redirect well. Use encode/decode steps, per below: html_entity_decode() Converts HTML entities to characters htmlentities() Converts characters to HTML entities

Checklist

[x] Write the schema
[x] Make the Apache root directory
[x] Config file in dev and prod and .gitignore
[x] Start the rsync to the Apache root dir

run as sudo /bin/bcompare or sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/your_domain

[x] Serve a test page from prod
[x] Serve cards from php [x] config file
[x] Hook up the database
[x] Basic Database Configuration.
[x] loading the homepage pings the dataconnection to get a count query of the db
[x] flushing css to bottom. Did this by making a wrap div 100% height
[x] pressing button should append a stripe div, repeatedly on the success page
[x] Make a html with put to db; every time home page loads a random url will be put to db
[x] Make a html with get from db; every time home page loads all the links retrieve and display from db
[x] Imitate a short, existing stack of yours on first run ('Worlds smallest LAMP')
[x] fix NULL in session id in links
[x] Imitate the CSS style of an admired page
[x] Ugh, whole-project pause: reorganize code to 1 class, 3 controllers, two main templates. Make sure still works.
[x] Make the shortener function
[x] Pass in the long URL from form to page 2
[x] First trivial test. Config phpunit.
[x] Make the checker for avoiding collisions, like the robot names? Use prepared statements per link below.
[x] Formify everything on the first page

[x] Make second page
[x] Configure apache to use a SQL table to do redirect
[x] Configure apache to use a rewrite table TEXTFILE to do redirect
[x] fix function notUnique; currently it is not checking anything
[x] Make a wrapper class around the DBTransaction for get/set the sql
[x] Make newlines append to the flat file used by Apache redirect
[x] button on success page should say 'make another'
[x] change menu bar to public always
[x] re-Enable --->public function notUnique(); make sure unit test still works
[x] use frontend validation
g [x[]] Sanitize inputs using 12-1 from d powers book
[x] SQL statement is a prepared statement
[x] David Powers 11-6,
[x] Change tatll to PIKL in files [o] CANNOT DUPLICATE BUG Reload of success page should not trigger new link making. [x] ssh over the whole site [x] Check location of the flat file. [x] set up Localhost for flatfile to redirect [ ] Apache 404 config oneliner. Prolly look in notes. Or default config grep it. [x] run composer [x] Check the SQL

Set up Digital Ocean

[x] ssh keys all around: D.O., local, Github
[x] Capistrano local install
[x] Enable Beyond Compare for syncing to remote (ended up using Git to deploy instead -- too many permissions hassles)

Improvements

[ ] Lint: todos. Error printers. Commented out code.
[ ] add private account
[ ] scrape new links for their favicons. Show site logos next to the long links that way.
[ ] look to see if any Composer package exists to avoid obscenity, blacklisted sites?
[ ] add a number of times clicked
[ ] Look over the actual algorithm ideas at https:// stackoverflow.com/questions/742013/ how-do-i-create-a-url-shortener
[x] Capistrano deploy needs DB and the flat file. Maybe not the config. ENDED UP using Git. [x] Block spam with a Regex for now [ ] Spam strategy needs a simple Captcha. By hand? [ ] Too MVP. It's not very OOP. Move everything into classes. [ ] leverage composer libraries (for malevolant users)
[ ] convert inputs to lower case
[ ] Write tests for addLinkToDbTest.php
[x] implement DBM with Apache. DB writes to a flat file (text, mod_rewrite)
[ ] confirm db, file errors go to logging. Get a logger from composer. Add log path to config
[ ] call logging in core/helpers/addToLinkages.php
[ ] make helpers into classes, OOP
[ ] accessibility
[ ] remove unused USE statements
[ ] Write at least three test cases in the tests/ folder. Run php bin/phpunit
[ ] Add a parser option to put the originals URL in as a dubdomain.
[ ] Add captcha?
[ ] refactor require/use/namespace everywhere, especially in tests. If desperate can try to use global namespace option onn some things per https://blog.eduonix.com/ web-programming-tutorials/namespaces-in-php/
[ ]

Your link is by default public but can also be saved to your private account. After shortening the URL, check how many clicks it received.

[ ] rightclick format document on everything or run phpcs at BASh

Apache deploy instructions

modules to enable sudo a2enmod rewrite sudo a2enmod dbd

enable site sudo a2ensite tatll.org

/etc/apache2/apache2.conf

#...
Nothing added here at all. Not even 'RewriteEngine on'

/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/tatll.org.conf
Note: Must set up reference map outside of the directory block. Okay to say 'rewriterule' inside of block though!

  GNU nano 4.8                                                                       /etc/apache2/sites-available/tatll.org.conf                                                                                  
 1 <VirtualHost *:80>
 2     ServerName tatll.org
 3     ServerAlias www.tatll.org
 4     ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
 5     DocumentRoot /var/www/tatll.org
 6     # LogLevel: Control the severity of messages logged to the error_log.
 7     # Available values: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
 8     LogLevel trace6
 9
10     ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
11     CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
12     RewriteEngine on
13     RewriteMap pickleFlat txt:/home/evan/projects/do-not-commit/shortener.txt
14     <Directory /var/www/tatll.org>
15         Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
16         AllowOverride All
17         Require all granted
18         RewriteRule \/?(\w{6}\d{2})$ ${pickleFlat:$1} [L]
19         # note the slash is a literal char
20         # note the [L] is required
21
22         # For all requests where files and folders do not exist
23         RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
24         RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
25         RewriteRule . templates/404.php [L]
26     </Directory>
27 </VirtualHost>
28

Deploy the Apache redirect file

Path projects/data/shortener.txt

Format:

abcdef12 https://example.com

Deploy sync

Files to ignore
.gitignore
phpunit*
Folders to ignore
.git
vendor

Resources

[PDO examples for calling the db] (https://www.php.net/manual/en/pdo.prepare.php) frontend validation backend untainting