B.O.B - The Boss Of Brevity

Meet B.O.B, the boss of brevity, the sultan of shortness, making your links famous for being short and sweet.

URL: https://bøb.co/

What is B.O.B?

B.O.B is a URL shortener, which means it takes a long URL and makes it shorter. It's a simple concept, but it's a useful one. B.O.B is a free and open source URL shortener, which means you can use it for free and you can see how it works. B.O.B is also a self-hosted URL shortener, which means you can host it yourself and you don't have to rely on a third party to keep your links alive.

Features

Some of the features B.O.B has include:

• Shorten URLs
• Advanced analytics
• API
• Editing short links
• Custom URLs
• Self-hosted
• Free and open source

Future plans

Some of the things we plan to add to B.O.B in the future include:

• A web interface
• Expiration dates for short links
• A mobile app
• Several social media bots that will support multiple platforms
• Premium features
  • Password protected links

Getting started

To get started with B.O.B, you'll need to install it.

• You can do this by downloading the latest release from the releases page (TODO).
• You can also build it yourself by cloning this repository and running go build in the root directory. Ensure you have Go installed if you want to do this. If Go is not installed, you can download it from here. Prefer version 1.20 or higher but it should work with older versions too.
• Or you can use our Dockerfile.

Ensure supported environmental variables have been set or provide them to the bob executable via cli.

If not using docker, you can run it with ./bob (or bob.exe on Windows). This will start B.O.B on port 8080. You can change the port by setting the PORT environment variable. For example, PORT=3000 ./bob will start B.O.B on port 3000.

Configuration

B.O.B can be configured using environment variables. The following environment variables are available:

• HOST: The host to run B.O.B on. Defaults to 127.0.0.1
• PORT: The port to run B.O.B on. Defaults to 8080.
• MONGODB_CONNECTION_URL: The connection URL of the mongodb database to use. Required.
• DEV_MODE: Set to true if you want to run without a mongodb connection URL. B.O.B will use an in-memory db.

You can also use cli flags to provide configuration values. For example, ./bob --dev will start B.O.B in development mode.

If starting B.O.B using docker, set the environments values with your own configuration or run it as it is.

NOTE: MemDB is not as restrictive and robust as the MongoDB implementation. If you encounter any issues using it in dev mode, please create a new issue.

API

B.O.B has an API which can be used to interact with it. The API is documented in our OpenAPI spec.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please read our contributing guidelines for more information.

API Testing

To test the API, you can upload the OpenAPI Specs we have provided to any API Testing Platform like Postman.

Or without leaving VSCode, you can use the Thunder Client extension to test the API. Click on the Collections tab on the left sidebar and click on the Import button. Then select the api.yaml file. That's it! You can now test the API.

Donations

If you like B.O.B and want to support its development, you can donate to us using the following methods:

• Buy me a coffee

License

B.O.B is licensed under the MIT License.

Credits

B.O.B is developed and maintained by Philemon Ukane. It is inspired by bit.ly and tinyurl.com. It is built using Go and MongoDB. It is hosted on Render (for free!).

Contact

You can contact me via email at [email protected] or on Twitter.

PS: I not always available on Twitter, so email is the best way to reach me. PSS: I was unable to put in much time into this project, so it's not as good as I would have liked it to be. I hope to improve it in the future.