URL Shortening Site

Question

I am working on a URL shortening site which uses PHP, MySQL and Apache. General idea of URL shortening as I look at open source projects: user gives a URL link and the syste

Answer 1

I think you are quite on the right way.

One thing I would not do like you said, though, is about this part :

then use apache mod_rewrite and create shorten url and then redirect.

I don't think I'd create an Apache RewriteRule, nor use mod_rewrite.

When receiving an short url, like short.com/MYID, Id would :

• decrypt the "MYID" part to the id number in DB
• fetch the URL from database
• just redirect to that URL from some server code (like PHP, using the header function)

A bit like this I guess :

// fetch $urlFull from DB (corresponding to the MYID received in GET)
header('HTTP/1.x 301 Moved Permanently');
header('Location: ' . $urlFull);
die;

(edit) If by mod_rewrite you meant "transform short.com/MYID to short.com/id=MYID", oh, yes, in this case, of course !

I'm using something like this on one of my sites, btw :

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/index.php
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?hash=$1   [L]

Hope this helps :-)