How Would You Design a URL Shortener Service Like TinyURL?

URL shortening services like bit.ly or TinyURL are very popular to generate shorter aliases for long URLs. You need to design this kind of web service where if a user gives a long URL then the service returns a short URL and if the user gives a short URL then it returns the original long URL. 

For example, shortening the given URL through TinyURL: 

https://www.w3wiki.org/system-design-interview-bootcamp-guide/

We get the result given below:

http://bit.ly/3uQqImU

When you’re asked this question in your interviews don’t jump into the technical details immediately. Most of the candidates make mistakes here and immediately they start listing out some bunch of tools, databases, and frameworks. In this kind of question, the interviewer wants a high-level design idea where you can give the solution for the scalability and durability of the service. 

System Design | URL Shortner (bit.ly, TinyURL, etc)

The need for efficient and concise URL management has become a big matter in this technical age. URL shortening services, such as bit.ly, and TinyURL, play a massive role in transforming lengthy web addresses into shorter, shareable links. As the demand for such services grows, it has become vital to undertand the System Design of URL Shortner and mastering the art of designing a scalable and reliable URL-shortening system, to gain a crucial skill for software engineers.

This article gets into the System Design of URL Shortner (URL Shortening Service), which will help in architecting a robust system that can seamlessly generate and redirect short URLs while ensuring scalability, durability, and high availability.

Important Topics for System Design of URL Shortner (URL Shortening Service)

  • How to Design a URL Shortener Service Like TinyURL?
  • Requirements for System Design of URL Shortner
  • Capacity estimation for System Design of URL Shortner
  • Low Level Design for System Design of URL Shortner
    • URL Shortening Logic (Encoding)
    • Techniques to Generate and Store TinyURL 
  • High-level Design for System Design of URL Shortner
  • Database
  • Conclusion

Similar Reads

How Would You Design a URL Shortener Service Like TinyURL?

URL shortening services like bit.ly or TinyURL are very popular to generate shorter aliases for long URLs. You need to design this kind of web service where if a user gives a long URL then the service returns a short URL and if the user gives a short URL then it returns the original long URL....

1. Requirements for System Design of URL Shortner Service

1.1 Functional requirements of URL Shortening service...

2. Capacity estimation for System Design of URL Shortner

Let’s assume our service has 30M new URL shortenings per month. Let’s assume we store every URL shortening request (and associated shortened link) for 5 years. For this period the service will generate about 1.8 B records....

3. Low Level Design for System Design of URL Shortner

...

3.1 URL Encoding Techniques to create Shortened URL

To convert a long URL into a unique short URL we can use some hashing techniques like Base62 or MD5. We will discuss both approaches....

3.2 Efficient Database Storage & Retrieval of TinyURL

...

4. High-level Design of a URL-Shortening Service

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5. Database

Let’s discuss the mapping of a long URL into a short URL in our database:...

Conclusion

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