Axum URL Shortener — Tutorial-Style

This project is a beginner-friendly URL shortener built with Rust, Axum, and MySQL. It focuses on the essentials: create a short link, redirect to the original URL, and fetch basic stats.

What you will build

• POST /shorten to create a short link
• GET /{short_code} to redirect
• GET /stats/{short_code} to view clicks and created time
• GET /health to verify the database connection

Prerequisites

• Rust (latest stable)
• MySQL Server

Step 1: Create the database

CREATE DATABASE url_shortener_db;

Step 2: Configure environment variables

Create a .env file in the project root:

DATABASE_URL=mysql://username:password@localhost:3306/url_shortener_db
SERVER_HOST=127.0.0.1
SERVER_PORT=3000
RUST_LOG=debug,tower_http=debug,axum=debug

Step 3: Build and run

cargo build
cargo run

Server starts at http://127.0.0.1:3000

Step 4: Try the API

Health check

GET http://127.0.0.1:3000/health

Create a short URL

POST http://127.0.0.1:3000/shorten
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "url": "https://www.example.com/very/long/url/that/needs/shortening"
}

Response example:

{
  "short_code": "abc1234",
  "short_url": "http://127.0.0.1:3000/abc1234",
  "original_url": "https://www.example.com/very/long/url/that/needs/shortening"
}

Redirect

GET http://127.0.0.1:3000/{short_code}

Stats

GET http://127.0.0.1:3000/stats/{short_code}

Response example:

{
  "short_code": "abc1234",
  "original_url": "https://www.example.com/very/long/url/that/needs/shortening",
  "clicks": 3,
  "created_at": "2026-02-10T18:23:45"
}

How it works (quick tour)

1. main.rs starts the server and prepares shared state.
2. database.rs connects to MySQL and ensures the urls table exists.
3. routes.rs defines the handlers and SQL queries.

Database schema

The app creates this table automatically if it does not exist:

CREATE TABLE urls (
  id BIGINT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
  short_code VARCHAR(10) UNIQUE NOT NULL,
  original_url TEXT NOT NULL,
  created_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
  clicks INT DEFAULT 0
);