🚀 URL Shortner

A tiny, easy-to-use URL shortener built with Flask and SQLite.

---

💡 Overview

This project provides a minimal web app that shortens long URLs and redirects requests from the generated short path to the original URL. It uses Flask for the web app and SQLAlchemy + SQLite for persistence.

• Tech: Python, Flask, Flask-SQLAlchemy, SQLite
• Files of interest: run.py, templates/index.html, templates/result.html

---

⚙️ Features

• Generate short, random URLs (default length: 6)
• Store mappings in a local SQLite database (links.db)
• Simple HTML form UI to create short links

---

🧩 Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Python 3.8+ installed
• Git (optional)

1) Clone or open the project

If you cloned the repo:

git clone <repo-url>
cd "Url Shortner"

Note: this repo already contains a requirements.txt file.

2) Create and activate a virtual environment

Windows (PowerShell):

python -m venv env
env\Scripts\Activate.ps1

Windows (cmd.exe):

python -m venv env
env\Scripts\activate.bat

macOS / Linux:

python3 -m venv env
source env/bin/activate

3) Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

4) Run the app

python run.py

Open your browser at: http://127.0.0.1:5000

---

🧪 Details / Notes

• The app uses sqlite:///links.db by default. The database file links.db is automatically created on first run.
• Short codes are 6 characters (letters + digits) by default. You can change gen_short(length=6) in run.py if you want different lengths.
• To run in development mode with auto-reload, set FLASK_ENV=development and run with flask run or edit run.py to app.run(debug=True) (for convenience during development).

---

🛠️ Project Structure

Url Shortner/
├─ run.py            # Flask app and URL model
├─ requirements.txt  # Dependencies
├─ templates/
│  ├─ index.html
│  └─ result.html
├─ instance/         # Flask instance folder (if used)
└─ links.db          # SQLite DB (created at runtime)

---

✅ Usage Example

1. Open the home page and paste a long URL into the form.
2. Click the button to shorten; the result shows a clickable shortened URL (e.g. http://127.0.0.1:5000/Ab4kX2).
3. Visiting that short path will redirect to the original long URL.

---

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see the LICENSE file for details.

---

Happy shortening! ✂️