gothere

gothere is a simple HTTP redirector. It loads a text file with mappings from short URLs to long URLs. When it gets a request for a short URL, it redirects to the long URL.

Why don't you just use bit.ly?

The namespace for bit.ly short URLs is shared across all custom domains. Every time I tried to customize a URL I got the dreaded 'This Custom Bitlink is already taken' error. That made me sad.

Quick start

Edit urls.txt (in the same directory as the binary) to specify your mappings.

• One URL per line
• Short URLs must start with /
• Long URLs must start with protocol://
• Separate the short URL and long URL with at least one space
• Comment lines and empty lines are ignored
• In the case of duplicate short URLs the last one wins

# this is a Comment

/g http://google.com
/m https://www.gmail.com
/a/short/url http://some/really/long/url

Then just run gothere to start your redirector

Options

You can specify the listening port number via the -port option, and the default URL to redirect to if the requested URL is not in the map via the -defaultUrl option. The rest of the options are for the excellent glog logging package.

$ ./gothere -h
Usage of ./gothere:
  -alsologtostderr=false: log to standard error as well as files
  -defaultUrl="http://google.com": default URL
  -log_backtrace_at=:0: when logging hits line file:N, emit a stack trace
  -log_dir="": If non-empty, write log files in this directory
  -logtostderr=false: log to standard error instead of files
  -port=80: listening port
  -stderrthreshold=0: logs at or above this threshold go to stderr
  -v=0: log level for V logs
  -vmodule=: comma-separated list of pattern=N settings for file-filtered logging

Updating the URL mapping

To update the URL mapping without downtime, edit urls.txt and send SIGHUP. This causes gothere to reload the mappings while continuing to serve HTTP.

How do I daemonize it?

I recommend using the excellent supervisord. Here's an example program block for /etc/supervisor/supervisord.conf. You can either let glog log directly to files, or redirect glog to stderr and let supervisord handle the log files.

[program:gothere]
command=/go/src/github.com/kmanley/gothere/gothere -logtostderr=true -port=80 -defaultUrl=http://whatever.com
directory=/go/src/github.com/kmanley/gothere
stdout_logfile=/var/log/gothere-stdout
stderr_logfile=/var/log/gothere-stderr

License

MIT License