URL Shortener with a Google Spreadsheet 📑

This is a simple web server that can redirect a pre-defined set of URLs in Google Sheets. All you need to do is define a Google Sheets like the following, and deploy a simple app just by clicking around.

shortcut	url
gh	https://github.com/ahmetb
yt	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
cv	https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c97PrqTFqiMpannv2/edit
resume	/cv

Costs: This can be deployed to Google Cloud Run and run for free thanks to generous free tier (+Google Sheets is free with a Gmail account as well).

This redirector also supports path additions on top of base URLs, for example, with the sheet row:

shortcut	url
gcp	https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform

The go.ahmet.dev/gcp/golang-samples will be redirected to https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/golang-samples.

Setup

1. Create a new Google Sheet: https://sheets.new.

2. Add two columns, first column is the "shortcut", the second column is the "url" to redirect the user. (see example)

3. Save the ID of your Sheet from the URL (it’s a random string that looks like 1SMeoyesCaGHRlYdGj9VyqD-qhXtab1jrcgHZ0irvNDs).

4. Click to deploy to Cloud Run, and provide your spreadsheet ID while deploying:

   

5. Go to https://console.cloud.google.com/run, click on sheets-url-shortener service. Find the email address written in the "Service Account" section.

6. Go to your Google Sheets, click "Share" and give this email address "Viewer" access on your sheet.

7. Go to https://console.developers.google.com/apis/api/sheets.googleapis.com/overview and make sure the Google Sheets API is enabled.

8. (Optional) If you want to use a custom domain like go.ahmet.dev, go to https://console.cloud.google.com/run/domains and map the sheets-url-shortener to your custom domain!

Advanced Configuration

This server can be configured with these following parameters:

Environment Variable	Description
SHEET_NAME	(optional) If you have multiple sheets in a spreadsheet, specify the sheet name.
CACHE_TTL	(optional) how frequently the spreadsheet must be reloaded (default: 5s)
HOME_REDIRECT	(optional) which url to redirect when root url (/) is visited
LISTEN_ADDR	(optional) which network address to listen on (default "" which means all interfaces)
PORT	(optional) http port to listen on (default 8080).

Disclaimer

This is not an official Google project. It's distributed as-is under Apache 2.0 License. See LICENSE.