1mo ago

Chhoto URL v6.3.0 is out now: A simple, blazingly fast, selfhosted URL shortener with no unnecessary features; written in Rust.

GitHub - SinTan1729/chhoto-url: A simple, blazingly fast, selfhosted URL shortener with no unnecessary features; written in Rust.

This release adds the ability to edit existing links, show and download QR codes for easy sharing, and various improvements in the frontend. Check out the release note for a list of all changes.

Selfhosted @lemmy.world

SinTan1729 @programming.dev

6mo ago

GitHub - SinTan1729/chhoto-url: A simple, blazingly fast, selfhosted URL shortener with no unnecessary features; written in Rust.

github.com /SinTan1729/chhoto-url

37 comments

Looks like a good project, but I genuinely don't quite get why Rust projects feel the need to advertise "written in Rust" as a feature. Do you find that a lot of users care which programming language your app is written in? Does it help with finding contributors?
I don't know which programming language most of my self-hosted apps use, and I don't mind since they all work well and do their job.
- Imo, it's nice to see tools written in a memory safe systems language
  Especially if you use a lot of them. More utility, less attack surface
  
  This makes sense! You get the same advantage if the app uses Go or C# though, and both of those can compile to a single statically-linked executable too.
- I mean, for myself personally if it were written in NodeJS or Python or something I'd be less interested.
  And I don't even care about Rust. It's just that everything and their sister is written in NodeJS and Python. I say this as someone who founded a company that uses Python.
  Also the more I hear about actual Rust adoption the more willing I am to consider it for the next big thing.
  
  if it were written in NodeJS or Python or something I'd be less interested.
  Does it matter if it's running in Docker and the container is lightweight (say less than 50MB), though? I like apps being written in a language I know well so I can contribute if needed, but other than that, I mostly treat a Docker image as a black box.
- It's just a way to advertise, I think. I've found myself putting more trust in projects written in Rust or Go, than say, JavaScript.
  
  It's advertising the inherent safety that comes from Rust and Go having errors as values. They're just fundamentally better languages.
- People who are into systems languages would care and for newer languages the more people advertise their usage the more mainstream it becomes and then bigger more traditional companies would consider using it and that would help increase the size of that languages ecosystem and community so I'm okay with people adding written in Rust to their project descriptions
- As an information security professional and someone who works on tiny, embedded systems, knowing that a project is written in Rust is a huge enticement. I wish more projects written in Rust advertised this fact!
  Benefits of Rust projects—from my perspective:
  Don't have to worry about the biggest, most common security flaws. Rust projects can still have security flaws (anything can) but it's much less likely for certain categories of flaws.
  Super easy to build stuff from scratch. Rust's crates ecosystem is fantastic! Especially in the world of embedded where it's a godsend compared to dealing with C/C++ libraries.
  It's probably super low overhead and really fast (because Rust stuff just tends to be like that due to the nature of the language and that special way the borrow checker bitches at you when you make poor programming choices haha).
  It's probably cross-platform or trivially made cross-platform.
  
  Thanks, this is a good insight.
I love projects like this. Do one thing, super well, without adding a kajillion dependencies. I love the vanilla HTML / CSS approach.
- Thank you for the kind words.
  Won't lie, the main reason that I stuck to a vanilla frontend approach is because I didn't know what else to do. I've never been a frontend dev, and never wish to be one. So I looked at an older project, and started by trying to replicate it. In hindsight, it was probably a good decision. The backend is more intentional though, and I do try to keep things simple and clean.
I'm already aware of a few small UI oddities. There were quite a few changes in the frontend, so I kind of expect these. Please let me know if you see anything weird. You can comment here, or open a bug report. I expect to do a patch release by tomorrow.
I am digging this, thanks for keeping it updated and improving it!
I see that you say it's feature complete / no user stuff; but it'd really mesh well if it took OIDC authentication. Don't need it to make users or anything, just instead of the password popup the OIDC provider is asked for confirmation that whatever user registered with the OIDC is logged in. That'd let me leverage extra 2FA protection from the OIDC provider and juice on that one-login life.
Now I have no experience making OIDC crap work nor how it even works behind the scenes, so I can't help :( sorry; just wishful thinking.
Also saw on your github - hope our newly shit-out gestapo don't bother you!
- I don't understand much about OIDC either. But I'll keep it in mind. Thanks.
- This would require configuration with a whitelist of which OIDC IdPs to trust. Otherwise anybody could self-authorise a OIDC token (using their own IdP) and use that to log in.
  
  Hmm, so that might be out of scope here. But I can try to do some kind of 2FA, shouldn't be much of an issue, really. It's just that I never thought a link shortener needed 2FA protection since the links will be publicly shared anyway.
  
  Yes that tracks with how OIDC setup works with my other services (you give the container the OIDC links and shared secrets so it knows how to talk to the OIDC and trust it).
The name is a dead ringer for a Bengali coder 🤝
- শুনে ভালো লাগলো যে এটা কারো চোখে পড়েছে। নয়তো সবাইকে বোঝাতে হয় কি নাম, কেন নাম। আসলে বাঙালী প্রোগ্রামার খুব বেশি চিনি না।
  
  Amar toh ekbaare chokhe poreche 😁
  Bangali "hobby" programmer khub kom i ache. Beshir bhag IT company te ache, aar shudhu kaaj er jonnoi joto ta programming dorkar pore, kore.
  Fediverse e arek bangali dekhe khub i bhalo laagche 🤝🤝
- At least it’s not JiaTan
  
  Would you like my custom xz tool?
Looks nice, thank you :]
I've been using your application for my services for almost a month now, though I just have one redirect link at the moment. I just forgot about it after the setup, although you could consider it to be a sign of a good product?
I wish if there could be additional analytics or logs for the links like a timeline, unique + existing visitors etc, however I completely understand if they cannot be implemented for the sake of keeping the app simple. Thanks for your service regardless!
- I'm happy that you like it. Any kind of analytics or logging is decidedly against my stated policy for this project, so I won't be adding it. But I understand that some might need it, and in that case, one should look at more comprehensive solutions like YOURLS.
I am lazy and just use .htaccess
Software typically has features because people want them, so unnecessary is utterly relative
- Unnecessary to me, I guess.

37 comments