Designing A Simple Url Shortening Service A TinyURL Approach - System Design

Requirements

Functional Requirements:

A UI to register the shortened url
- input = original url
- output = shortened url
Visiting a shortened url redirect to the original url

Non-Functional Requirements:

The shortened url should redirect to the original url in under 30ms

Capacity Estimation

Estimate the scale of the system. Consider daily active users, read/write ratio, storage requirements, bandwidth, and any relevant QPS calculations...

API Design

POST /register with the original url in the body. Returns the generated urlId used to construct the shortened link
GET /url/{urlId} returns HTML with <head><meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0; URL=REDIRECT_URL" /></head>

High-Level Design

Urls are saved in a table with an id. By using obsucation we generate a urlId from this id. When requesting the /url/{urlId} we de-obfuscate the id and fetch the original url from the table. We return an html file with the original url in the http-equiv attribute.

Database Design

Define the data model. Identify the main entities, their attributes, and relationships. Consider the choice of database type (SQL vs NoSQL) and justify your decision based on access patterns...

Detailed Component Design

Deep dive into 2-3 key components. Explain how they work, how they scale, discuss tradeoffs, capacity, and any relevant algorithms or data structures.