URL Shortener Documentation

Introduction

The URL Shortener is a Django web application that provides two main functions: encoding a long URL to a short URL and decoding a short URL back to its original long URL. This is achieved using the pyshorteners library for URL shortening and caching with Django's cache framework.

Functions

1. encode_url(request, url)

Encodes a long URL to a short URL with a shortened slug.

Parameters

• request: The Django request object.
• url (str): The original long URL to be encoded.

Response

• JsonResponse: A JSON response containing the original URL and the shortened URL.

Example

# Request
POST /encode-url/

# Request Body
{
    "url": "https://www.example.com/long-url-to-be-shortened"
}

# Response
{
    "original_url": "https://www.example.com/long-url-to-be-shortened",
    "shortened_url": "https://short.url/abc123"
}

2. decode_url(request, url)

Decodes a short URL back to its original long URL.

Parameters

• request: The Django request object.
• url (str): The short URL to be decoded.

Response

• JsonResponse: A JSON response containing the short URL and the original URL.

Example

# Request
POST /decode-url/

# Request Body
{
    "url": "https://short.url/abc123"
}

# Response
{
    "shortened_url": "https://short.url/abc123",
    "original_url": "https://www.example.com/long-url-to-be-shortened"
}

Notes

• Both functions are decorated with @csrf_exempt to disable CSRF protection for simplicity.
• The shortening and expanding of URLs are handled using the pyshorteners library.
• Caching is implemented using Django's cache framework to improve performance by avoiding redundant API calls for the same URL.

Please note that this documentation assumes you have a Django web application set up and configured with the necessary dependencies, including pyshorteners. Ensure proper error handling and security measures are implemented before deploying this application in a production environment.