Hey! This is a personal project I built to learn AWS and serverless architecture. It's basically a URL shortener (like bit.ly) but fully deployed on AWS using serverless services — no EC2, no servers to manage.

I built this while learning AWS CDK and it took me a while to get everything connected properly, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out

Live demo: (coming soon — need to set up a custom domain)

• Paste a long URL → get a short link back
• Custom aliases supported (e.g. /my-link instead of a random code)
• Tracks how many times each link was clicked
• Dashboard to see all your links and their stats
• Links auto-expire after a set number of days

I tried to use as many AWS services as I could to learn them:

This is roughly how everything connects:

User
 │
 ├─── visits frontend ──► CloudFront ──► S3 (React app)
 │
 └─── makes API call ──► API Gateway ──► Lambda functions ──► DynamoDB

I went serverless because:

1. Free tier covers basically everything at my usage level
2. No servers to manage or worry about
3. I wanted to actually learn Lambda + DynamoDB

cloudsnip/
├── infrastructure/ # CDK stack - defines all AWS resources
│ ├── bin/
│ │ └── cloudsnip.ts # entry point
│ └── lib/
│ └── cloudsnip-stack.ts # all the AWS stuff lives here
│
├── backend/ # Lambda functions (Python)
│ ├── functions/
│ │ ├── shorten/ # handles POST /shorten
│ │ ├── redirect/ # handles GET /{code} - does the actual redirect
│ │ ├── analytics/ # handles GET /analytics/{code}
│ │ └── list_urls/ # handles GET /urls (for the dashboard)
│ ├── shared/
│ │ └── utils.py # helper functions shared between lambdas
│ └── tests/ # pytest tests
│
└── frontend/ # React app
 └── src/
 ├── components/ # UI components
 ├── api/ # API calls
 └── types/ # TypeScript types

• AWS account + AWS CLI configured (aws configure)
• Node.js 18+
• Python 3.11+
• AWS CDK: npm install -g aws-cdk

# clone it
git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/cloudsnip.git
cd cloudsnip
# install CDK dependencies
cd infrastructure
npm install
# first time only - sets up CDK in your account
cdk bootstrap
# deploy everything
cdk deploy

After running cdk deploy it will print out the API URL and the CloudFront URL. Copy those.

cd frontend
npm install
# put your API gateway URL here
echo "VITE_API_URL=https://YOUR_API_ID.execute-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/prod" > .env.local
npm run dev
# opens at http://localhost:3000

cd backend
pip install -r requirements.txt
pytest tests/ -v

Creates a short URL.

// request
{
 "url": "https://example.com/some/long/url",
 "customAlias": "my-link", // optional
 "ttlDays": 30 // optional, how many days before it expires
}
// response (201)
{
 "shortCode": "my-link",
 "shortUrl": "https://xxxx.cloudfront.net/my-link",
 "originalUrl": "https://example.com/some/long/url",
 "createdAt": "2024年01月15日T10:30:00Z"
}

Redirects to the original URL. Also increments the click counter.

Returns stats for a short link.

{
 "shortCode": "my-link",
 "originalUrl": "https://example.com/...",
 "clickCount": 42,
 "createdAt": "2024年01月15日T10:30:00Z",
 "lastClickedAt": "2024年01月20日T08:15:00Z"
}

Lists all your short links (used by the dashboard).

• CDK is really powerful - writing infrastructure as code in TypeScript and just running cdk deploy to spin up 6+ AWS services is honestly mind blowing
• DynamoDB is different - coming from SQL, DynamoDB took some getting used to. No JOINs, and you really need to think about access patterns upfront. I added a GSI (Global Secondary Index) to support the dashboard query
• Lambda cold starts - first request after the function hasn't been called in a while is slightly slower. Not a big deal for this project but something to keep in mind
• CORS - spent like an hour debugging CORS issues between API Gateway and the frontend. The fix was adding the right headers to every Lambda response
• Atomic operations in DynamoDB - for the click counter I use an atomic increment (ADD clickCount :one) so there's no race condition if two people click at the same time

• Rate limiting - right now anyone could spam the API
• Auth - no login system, all links are public
• QR code generation would be cool to add
• Better error messages on the frontend
• Custom domain setup

At my usage level (basically zero traffic) this costs almost nothing:

• Lambda: free tier (1M requests/month free)
• DynamoDB: free tier (25 GB storage free)
• API Gateway: ~3ドル.50 per million requests
• S3 + CloudFront: cents per month

MIT © 2025 mahmoudz2000