Build a self-hosted URL shortener with a dashboard

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.