External Link Tracker

A simple Go web application that counts hits on external URLs and then redirects to the destination.

The URL used looks like:

/g?url=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com

Note that to redirect externally the URL must start with the protocol.

The functionality is based on a whitelist - if the URL isn't stored in the database the service will serve a 404.

There is currently no API for adding, removing, or fetching counts of hits.

Developing or running the tracker

The service uses GNU Make to run:

• make run runs the service on localhost:8080
• make test runs the Go tests
• make build runs go build with the GOPATH corrected to include vendorised dependencies. This generates a binary file called external-link-tracker

Dependencies

The service depends on MongoDB.