Airtable node
+3

Build a self-hosted URL shortener with a dashboard

Published 2 years ago

Created by

dali
mohamed ali

Categories

Engineering
Building Blocks

Template description

This workflow creates an automatic self-hosted URL shortener. It consists of three sub-workflows:

  1. Short URL creation for extracting the provided long URL, generating an ID, and saving the record in the database. It returns a short link as a result.
  2. Redirection for extracting the ID value, validating the existence of its correspondent record in the database, and returning a redirection page after updating the visits (click) count.
  3. Dashboard for calculating simple statistics about the saved record and displaying them on a dashboard.

Read more about this use case and how to set up the workflow in the blog post How to build a low-code, self-hosted URL shortener in 3 steps.

Prerequisites

  • A local proxy set up that redirects the n8n.ly domain to your n8n instance
  • An Airtable account and credentials
  • Basic knowledge of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS

Nodes

  • Webhook nodes trigger the sub-workflows on calls to a specified link.
  • IF nodes route the workflows based on specified query parameters.
  • Set nodes set the required values returned by the previous nodes (id, longUrl, and shortUrl).
  • Airtable nodes retrieve records (values) from or append records to the database.
  • Function node calculates statistics on link clicks to be displayed on the dashboard, as well as its design.
  • Crypto node generates a SHA256 hash.

Share Template

Implement complex processes faster with n8n

red icon yellow icon red icon yellow icon