Design a URL Shortening Service

EasySystem Design

DatabasesCachingLoad Balancing

Problem Description

Design a service like TinyURL, where users can enter a long URL and get a shortened version that redirects to the original URL.

Requirements:

The system should be highly available. This is really important to ensure that URL redirection doesn't fail.
URL redirection should happen in real-time with minimal latency.
Shortened links should not be predictable.
The system should be scalable to handle a high volume of requests.
Consider analytics and how to track click counts and other metrics.

Hints:

Think about how to generate unique short URLs efficiently.

Consider the database schema for storing the mapping between short and long URLs.

How would you handle the case when the system gets a request for a non-existent short URL?

Think about caching strategies to improve performance.

Example:

A user submits a long URL like https://www.example.com/very/long/path/to/resource?param1=value1&param2=value2, and the service returns a short URL like https://short. and the service returns a short URL like https://short.url/abc123.

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