🔗 Shrink Track Backend

A secure, authenticated URL shortener API built with Django REST Framework. It supports automatic short URL generation, redirection logic, and per-user rate limiting

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🌐 Deployment

Live API: https://shrink-track.onrender.com/

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🧩 Features

• ✅ User Registration and Token Authentication
• 🔐 Per-user Rate Limiting (5 requests/minute)
• 🔗 Unique 6-character URL shortening
• ↩️ Automatic Redirection using short codes
• 🧼 Validation for duplicate email, username, and password confirmation
• 🧹 Secure deletion of user accounts

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🚀 Endpoints

🔐 Auth & User

Method	Endpoint	Description	Auth Required
POST	/user/create/	Create a new user	❌
POST	/user/get-token/	Obtain auth token	❌
DELETE	/user/delete/	Delete current user account	✅

🔗 URL Shortener

Method	Endpoint	Description	Auth Required
POST	/api/shrink/	Submit an original URL to shrink it	✅
GET	/<code>/	Redirect to original URL using code	❌

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🛠️ How It Works

▶️ URL Shortening Flow

1. A logged-in user sends a POST to /api/shrink/ with their original URL.
2. The system:
   • Generates a unique 6-character alphanumeric code
   • Builds a public short URL
   • Stores the original + short URL pair along with the user
3. The response contains the shrinked URL.
4. The short URL can be used for redirection via GET /<code>/.

🔁 Redirection Logic

Handled in shrinktrack/redirect.py, the app fetches the matching ShrinkInstanceModel using the shrinked_url and redirects to the original_url.

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🧪 Example Request

🔗 Shrink URL

POST /api/shrink/
Authorization: Token <your-token>
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "original_url": "https://example.com"
}

🔁 Redirect

Navigate to:

https://shrink-track.onrender.com/<code>/

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⚙️ Tech Stack

• Python 3.10+
• Django 4.x
• Django REST Framework
• SQLite (default, can be switched)
• Token Authentication
• Render for Deployment