Build a self-hosted URL shortener with a dashboard

This workflow creates an automatic self-hosted URL shortener. It consists of three sub-workflows:

Short URL creation for extracting the provided long URL, generating an ID, and saving the record in the database. It returns a short link as a result. Redirection for extracting the ID value, validating the existence of its correspondent record in the database, and returning a redirection page after updating the visits (click) count. Dashboard for calculating simple statistics about the saved record and displaying them on a dashboard.

Read more about this use case and how to set up the workflow in the blog post How to build a low-code, self-hosted URL shortener in 3 steps.

Prerequisites

A local proxy set up that redirects the n8n.ly domain to your n8n instance An Airtable account and credentials Basic knowledge of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS

Nodes

Webhook nodes trigger the sub-workflows on calls to a specified link. IF nodes route the workflows based on specified query parameters. Set nodes set the required values returned by the previous nodes (id, longUrl, and shortUrl). Airtable nodes retrieve records (values) from or append records to the database. Function node calculates statistics on link clicks to be displayed on the dashboard, as well as its design. Crypto node generates a SHA256 hash.