Your own short links as an easily deployed static site on Render

You're viewing a template repository tailored for deploying Suri to Render. Head over to the main repository to learn more about Suri, including additional deployment options.

Setup: Step By Step

1. Hit the "Use this template" button above and then "Create a new repository". Fill in the required details to create a new repository based on this one.
2. On the Render Dashboard, click "New > Blueprint".
3. Connect or re-configure your GitHub account to grant access to your new repository. Select that repository and hit "Connect".
4. Give the Blueprint a name, such as "Suri". The main branch should already be selected. Hit "Deploy Blueprint" to begin the initial build and deploy.

Auto-Deploy

Any commits to the main branch of your new repository will trigger a new build and deploy. You can change this by going to the "Settings" of your suri service and editing the "Branch" and "Auto-Deploy" options.

Pull requests are built by GitHub Actions without deploying, so a mistake in links.json is caught before it's merged. You can change this by editing .github/workflows/build.yml.

Custom Domain

To use a custom domain, follow Render's guide: Custom Domains.

Updating Suri

Dependabot opens a pull request in your repository about a week after a new version of Suri is released. You can also update it yourself:

npm install @surishortlink/suri@latest

Then commit the updated package.json and package-lock.json. Before updating to a new major version, check the release notes for breaking changes.

How It Works

Manage Links

At the heart of Suri is the links.json file, located in the src directory, where you manage your links. All of the template repositories include this file seeded with a few examples:

{
  "/": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsHiG-43Fzg",
  "1": "https://fee.org/articles/the-use-of-knowledge-in-society/",
  "gh": "https://github.com/surishortlink/suri"
}

It couldn't be simpler: the key is the "short link" path that gets redirected, and the value is the target URL. Keys can be as short or as long as you want, and can include / for nested paths, like gh/suri. Avoid ? and #, which browsers treat as the start of a query string or fragment. / is a special entry for redirecting the root path.

Build Static Site

Suri ships with a suri executable file that generates the static site from the links.json file. The static site is output to a directory named build.

All of the template repositories are configured with a build script that invokes this executable, making the command you run simple:

npm run build

When you make a change to the links.json file, simply re-run this command to re-generate the static site, which can then be re-deployed. This template repository is configured to do this automatically.

Config

Configuration is handled through the suri.config.json file in the root directory. There is only one option at this point:

Option	Description	Type	Default
js	Whether to redirect with JavaScript instead of a <meta> refresh.	Boolean	false

Public Directory

Finally, any files in the public directory will be copied over to the build directory without modification when the static site is built. This can be useful for files like favicon.ico or robots.txt (that said, Suri provides sensible defaults for both).