Requirements

Functional Requirements:

• Create a short URL for a given long URL.
• Return the long URL associated with a given short URL.

Non-Functional Requirements:

• low latency like 100ms
• availability
• unique short urls

API Design

POST /shorten

body: {

longUrl : "https://example.com/sdfsdfsdfsdf"

}

GET /shorten => to retrieve short code for long urls

POST /users

body: {

userid,username,email,password ...etc

}

GET /users/{userid} => to fetch information of user

GET /{short code} => redirection to long url destination

High-Level Design

components includes

clients

api gateway

rate limiters

servers(shortening server and redirecting server)(microservice architecture)

load balancers

cache

database

Detailed Component Design

the client first provides a long url and sends that url in request body to backend

the api gateway forwards the request to shortening service server. the server uses appropriate cryptographic algorithm(sha256 and base62) to generate a unique code

then the server will store the unique code in database as well as cache

the generated short code is returned back to the user

once the user sends request with the short code the request is forwarded to redirecting service server which fetches the corresponding long url and redirects the user to it

+microservice architecture is used so that the redirecting service can scale independently , it will help to handle the different read and write ratio