System Design Interview - Chapter 8 - Design a URL Shortener

The previous chapters have described the underlying technologies such as consistent hashing, ID generator, and now using these techniques we can develop a URL shortener that can generate 100 million URLs per day.

Design consists of the following elements:

• API endpoints
• URL redirecting
• URL shortening
• Data model
• Hash functions: Hash + collision resolution vs Base-62 conversion
• Additional topics to consider:
  • Rate limiter
  • Web server scaling
  • Database scaling
  • Analytics
  • Availability, consistency, and reliability

These items are disclosed in a very interesting Chapter 8 of the book:

“System Design Interview – An insider’s guide” by Alex Xu

Sharing my mind map with all the details as usual:

Download full mind map (PDF)