Serverless URL Shortener

• 

  Architecture

• 

  Sample Output

Inspiration

URL shorteners like Bitly are super useful, but many are either paid, bloated, or centralized. I wanted to create a lightweight, serverless URL shortener that is scalable, cost-effective, and completely serverless using AWS services. This idea also aligned perfectly with my interest in learning AWS Lambda and API Gateway.

What it does

How we built it

1. Created a Lambda function in AWS
2. Used Node.js (or Python) to write the URL shortening logic
3. Integrated it with API Gateway using a POST route /Hellolamda
4. Configured the API Gateway to deploy to a stage (e.g., /default)
5. Enabled automatic deployment for quick testing and iteration
6. Used curl/Postman to test the API and receive shortened URL output

Challenges we ran into

Debugging the “Method Not Allowed” and “Not Found” errors from API Gateway Understanding how to correctly link API Gateway routes to Lambda Managing stage deployments and API URLs effectively

What we learned

How to set up an AWS Lambda function and expose it publicly using API Gateway How to handle HTTP POST requests and route them to Lambda Managing API Gateway routes, stages, and integrations Basics of creating and parsing JSON payloads in Lambda

Realizing the importance of deployment stages and proper configuration

Built With

• awsapigateway
• awslamda
• json
• python