🚀 rxst.me - A Blazingly Fast URL Shortener

Welcome to rxst.me, a high-performance, scalable, and secure URL shortener built using Rust, Actix-Web, and SQLx. This project was developed as part of the BLAZINGLY FAST Hackathon to provide an ultra-fast and reliable solution for shortening and managing URLs.

✨ Features

✅ Blazing Fast Performance – Built with Rust and Actix-Web, leveraging async operations for speed.
✅ Short URL Generation – Generates short, Base62-encoded or custom alias URLs.
✅ Custom Alias Handling – Users can provide their own alias; if taken, alternative suggestions are provided.
✅ Automatic Expiration (TTL) – URLs expire after 6 months and are automatically deleted.
✅ Leet (1337) Transformations – If an alias is taken, the system suggests leet-style variations.
✅ Redirection System – Redirects users to the original URL via /{short_url}.
✅ URL Info Retrieval – Retrieve URL details (original URL, expiration date) via /u/{short_url}.
✅ Validation – Ensures valid URLs and prevents invalid alias names.
✅ Security Headers – Enforced CORS, XSS, and Content Security Policies.
✅ Zero Downtime Cleanup – A background task automatically deletes expired URLs.

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⚡ Tech Stack

• Rust – Safe, fast, and memory-efficient.
• Actix-Web – High-performance web framework.
• SQLx + SQLite – Async database interaction.
• Tokio – Async runtime for Rust.
• Regex – For URL validation.
• dotenv – Manage environment variables.

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📂 Project Structure

rxst.me/
│── src/
│   │── main.rs        # Main server entry point
│   │── config.rs      # Initializes logging & environment variables
│   │── database.rs    # Handles database interactions & TTL cleanup
│   │── handlers.rs    # HTTP request handlers (shorten, redirect, info)
│   │── hash.rs        # Hashing & encoding for short URLs
│   │── models.rs      # Database models & request structures
│   │── routes.rs      # Actix-Web route configuration
│   │── validation.rs  # URL validation logic
│── migrations/        # SQL migration files
│── static/index.html  # Frontend UI for shortening URLs
│── .env               # Environment configuration
│── Cargo.toml         # Rust dependencies

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🚀 Quick Start

📌 1️⃣ Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/s3r1msultan/blazingly_fast_url_shortener.git
cd blazingly_fast_url_shortener

📌 2️⃣ Setup the Environment

Create a .env file with:

DATABASE_URL=sqlite://url_shortener.db

📌 3️⃣ Run Database Migrations

cargo install sqlx-cli
cargo sqlx migrate run

📌 4️⃣ Start the Server

cargo run

📌 5️⃣ Open in Browser

Visit http://0.0.0.0:8080 and start shortening URLs.

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🔗 API Endpoints

🔹 Shorten a URL

POST /shorten

{
    "original_url": "https://example.com",
    "custom_alias": "myalias"
}

Response:

{
    "short_url": "myalias"
}

🔹 Redirect to Original URL

GET /{short_url}

• Redirects users to the original website.

🔹 Get URL Info

GET /u/{short_url} Response:

{
    "short_url": "myalias",
    "expiration_date": "2025-08-03 13:00:00"
}

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🎯 How It Works

🔥 1️⃣ Hash-Based Short URL Generation

• Uses FNV-1a Hashing + Base62 Encoding to generate deterministic short URLs.

🛠 2️⃣ Alternative Alias Suggestions

• If an alias is already taken, the system suggests alternative aliases using leet-style replacements:
  • "google" → "9oogle", "90ogle", "900gle"

🕒 3️⃣ Automatic Expiration & Cleanup

• URLs expire in 6 months.
• A background task deletes expired URLs every hour.

🔎 4️⃣ Fetch URL Details

• Users can retrieve info about a short URL via /u/{short_url}.

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🛠 Contributing

Want to improve rxst.me? Contributions are welcome!
To contribute:

1. Fork the repo.
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature-name).
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m "Added feature XYZ").
4. Push to GitHub (git push origin feature-name).
5. Submit a Pull Request (PR).

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📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

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👥 Team & Credits

Built by s3r1msultan for the BLAZINGLY FAST Hackathon.

🚀 Let's make URL shortening faster than ever!