Zero Width Shortener (ZWS)

Shorten URLs with invisible spaces.

Or, configure your own instance to use any other kinds of characters.

Contributors

Code Contributors

This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute.

Special thanks to Jaex for integrating ZWS into ShareX.

Financial Contributors

Become a financial contributor and help us sustain our community. [Contribute]

Individuals

Organizations

Support this project with your organization. Your logo will show up here with a link to your website. [Contribute]

Status page

A status page for the official zws.im instance of ZWS is available at status.zws.im.

Self-hosting

Heroku

Running an instance of ZWS on Heroku is the easiest way to self-host. You can also stay totally within the free limits of both the web process and the Heroku Postgres database. Note that the Hobby Dev (free) plan of Heroku Postgres has a row limit of 10,000, which might not be enough for your use case. Consider using the API key feature of ZWS to restrict access to your instance.

Docker Compose

1. Clone the repository
2. Copy db.example.env to db.env and fill in the values
3. Copy example.env to .env and update the DATABASE_URL environment variable to match the values in db.env
4. Run docker volume create --name=zws-postgres-storage
5. Run docker-compose up -d (this will automatically apply database migrations)

Database migrations

After you create an app using the above button you'll need to run the database migrations before shortening any URLs. These are done automatically, but manual usage may be required when upgrading versions.

This can be done easily through Docker Compose by running the following commands:

docker volume create --name=zws-postgres-storage
docker-compose up migration

Even if your database isn't being run through Docker Compose you'll still need to create the volume and start the db service. You can delete the volume right after. If you know a better way to do this, please open a pull request!

Heroku Postgres

If you are hosting your instance on Heroku, migrations are automatically applied. If you need to manually apply migrations or are only using Heroku for your database you'll need the credentials for your database:

1. Get the Heroku Postgres connection URI from
   • the web interface (select your datastore, "Settings", "Database Credentials", "URI")
   • the Heroku CLI
2. Create a .env file and enter in the connection URI

Example:

DATABASE_URL=postgresql://johndoe:[email protected]:5432/mydb?schema=public

Afterward you can run the migration commands shown above.

Badges

ZWS instances expose two routes that implement the Shields endpoint schema:

Image	Route	Description	Example
	/stats/shields/urls	Number of shortened URLs	https://img.shields.io/endpoint?url=https://api.zws.im/stats/shields/urls
	/stats/shields/visits	Number of visited URLs	https://img.shields.io/endpoint?url=https://api.zws.im/stats/shields/visits
	/stats/shields/version	ZWS version	https://img.shields.io/endpoint?url=https://api.zws.im/stats/shields/version