Rust

Link Shortener Service in Rust

Microservices

Develop a minimalistic link-shortening microservice using the Axum framework and its routing system.

⏱️ 5h 40min

📦 17 modules

Full Version

What you'll build

We'll build a complete URL shortening service from scratch using Rust and the axum web framework. Starting with a bare Cargo project, we'll progressively add async runtime support, HTTP routing, CLI configuration, request handlers, shared state management, and a domain-specific code type with base62 encoding.

Along the way we'll see how axum's extractor system works, how to share mutable state safely across async handlers using Arc<RwLock<T>>, and how to implement custom Serde serialization for domain types. By the end, our service accepts URLs via a POST endpoint, generates compact short codes, stores mappings in memory, and redirects visitors back to the original destination.

Playground Contents

Project Baseline
Async Runtime Foundation
Minimal HTTP Server
Configuration Parser
Health Check Endpoint
Link Creation Endpoint
Shared Application State
Registration Method Skeleton
Counter and Code Domain Type
Base62 Display Formatting
Short Link Construction
Handler Response Logic
Persistent Link Storage
Code Extraction and Redirect Route
Reverse Lookup Method
Redirect Response
URL Scheme Validation

Objectives

Set up an async Rust web service with axum and tokio
Configure runtime options with clap and environment variables
Implement REST endpoints for link creation and redirection
Manage shared mutable state with Arc<RwLock>
Design a domain type with custom Display and Deserialize implementations
Build an in-memory storage model with bidirectional HashMap lookups

Link Shortener Service in Rust

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