About Lynx

Lynx is a self-hosted link shortner application. It allows you to shorten, track, and manage links with ease.

It is built with SQLite, making it lightweight, easy to manage, and perfect for projects of any scale. No complex database setup required, it offers a hassle-free way to handle your links while ensuring reliability and performance.

Features

• Choice pages - Create choice pages to allow users to navigate to multiple destinations from a single short URL, offering flexibility and boosting conversions.

• Customizable slug -Define meaningful, unique slugs for your short urls like ac.me/help or ac.me/shop etc.

• Password protected links - Secure your shortened links with passwords and ensure only authorized users can access the resource.

• QR Code - Automatically generate QR codes for every shortened link, simplifying access and sharing.

• Teams - Collaborate efficiently by creating teams, allowing shared access and management.

• Custom domains - Enhance branding by using multiple custom domains for your short links, providing flexibility and a customized experience for different audiences or campaigns.

• Analytics - Gain insights into link performance with detailed analytics, including click counts, geographic data, and device statistics.

Requirements

• PHP >= 8.2
• Laravel >= 11.x

Installing locally

Follow below steps to install it locally -

Clone repository

git clone https://github.com/frikishaan/lynx.git

Install dependencies

composer install

npm install

npm run build

Run database migrations

Run the database migrations using the following command -

php artisan migrate

Optionally, seed the test data into the database using -

php artisan db:seed

Create account

Use the following command to create a account in the system -

php artisan lynx:create-account

Background tasks

Lynx handles the click analytics asynchronously using the Laravel's powerful queue system. By offloading analytics to background tasks, Lynx maintains optimal performance for users while managing data processing in the background. To start processing the queue items run the following command -

php artisan queue:work

Note - For long-running workers in production, ensure you supervise them using a process manager like Supervisor or Laravel Horizon for better reliability.

Scheduled Jobs

Lynx utilizes Laravel's task scheduling system to handle schduled jobs in the application.

Currently, Lynx includes a job which deletes the expired links in the system, provided they are marked for deletion. To run the scheduled jobs use the following command -

php artisan schedule:run

For continuous scheduling in production checkout the Laravel's documentation.

License

Lynx license