ShorTor

A URL Shortener, designed for Tor

What is this?

ShorTor is a simple URL Shortener written in Python using the Flask framework. It is licensed under the MIT License and can be used and modified freely. It has been designed with Tor in mind and can be easily set up as a Hidden Service. However, this does not mean that it cannot be used as a normal service, outside of Tor. It has been tested with Tor Browser and Maximum Security Settings and words without any issues. For the link storage it uses the file system, and more specifically the links folder.

The current version of ShorTor does not support any kind of rate limiting so it is "vulnerable" to abuse, however there are plans for rate limiting in the future. It has not been incorporated in the current version for simplicity, as well as Tor compatibility (a Hidden Service cannot see any IP / set a cookie).

The API

ShorTor actually has an API built-in that can be used by anyone to shorten links automatically. It is not a proper API yet, but it works.

Shortening new links

A POST request to /new with the link parameter set and Accept: application/json in the headers will return a JSON dictionary with the following information:

{
	"success": "true",
	"id": "<ID>",
	"link": "https://<HOSTNAME>/l/<ID>",
	"private_key": "<PRIVATEKEY>"
}

If the URL supplied via the link parameter is invalid, an HTTP Status 400 will be returned.

The success variable indicates whether the action succeeded, the id variable contains the unique identifier of the shortened link, the link variable contains the publicly accessible shortened URL, and the private_key variable contains a Private Key, used solely for viewing statistics about that Link ID.

How to run ShorTor

The recommended way of running ShorTor is using virtualenv:

virtualenv .
bin/pip install Flask
./main.py

This will start the development server listening on 127.0.0.1:5000. If you're interested in running this in a production environment, a full WSGI server like Gunicorn is recommended.