Blinky

Blinky is a minimal URL shortener/manager.

You can map long urls to specific subpaths (ex. /docs -> https://example.com).

Hosting

Docker

A Docker image is available on Docker Hub as jonahsnider/blinky.

It requires the following environment variables to be set:

• DATABASE_URL
• ADMIN_PASSWORD
• BASE_URL

Please see below installation instructions for information on what these should be defined as.

Without Docker

First time setup

0. Install Node.js v20

1. Clone the project

   git clone https://github.com/jonahsnider/blinky.git
   

2. Install dependencies

   npm ci
   

3. Build the project

   npm run build
   

4. Set environment variables

   The server needs a few environment variables to be defined in order to function:

   Variable	Description
   DATABASE_URL	A MySQL connection URL, following this format
   ADMIN_PASSWORD	A password for accessing the admin interface
   BASE_URL	A well-formed URL where the service is hosted (ex. https://blinky.example.com)

   You can either define these directly in your system environment, or use a .env file in the project root:

    # .env
   DATABASE_URL=mysql://user:password@host:port/database
   ADMIN_PASSWORD=password
   BASE_URL=https://blinky.example.com
   

   Documentation for how .env is parsed is here.

5. Run database migrations

   npm run migrate
   

Updating

1. Pull the latest changes

   git pull
   

2. Install dependencies

    npm ci
   

3. Build the project

   npm run build
   

4. Run database migrations

   npm run migrate
   

Starting the server

Start the server:

npm start

The PORT environment variable can be defined (not in .env) to set what port the server will listen on:

PORT=8080 npm start