Show HN: YoLinks, a human-readable URL shortener for teams (yolinks.app)

6 points by aryann ↗ HN
Hi HN,

I've been working on YoLinks (aka YoLinks.app) for the past few months. Most URLs are long, unmemorable, and opaque. YoLinks allows anyone in your organization to create aliases that anyone else can access. These aliases end up being shorter, more memorable, and transparent. Imagine using yo/onboarding instead of https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pyJy21G5F508r6Fbg0AMlE8a.... All aliases are private to your organization.

My primary goal in building YoLinks was learning. I was also frustrated that my current company doesn't have a similar tool; you can learn a lot more while solving a real problem (this is why I didn't sign us up for similar products on the market).

Here's a list of concepts and tools I learned while building this:

* React for the frontend

* Cypress for in-browser tests

* Concepts around building a multi-tenant product for enterprises (roles, managing mappings between users and their organizations, SSO)

* Google Identity Platform (which also exposes you to Firebase Authentication) for authentication and supporting OIDC auth for multiple tenants

* Mixpanel

* Browser extension development (manifest v3 for Chrome and Edge; v2 for FireFox)

I'd love any feedback!

2 comments

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Wow this is great. Every company that I've worked for had created their own implementation of this. It's great to know that such product exists for the small companies or the ones that don't have the in-house expertise.

Does it work with okta as well? or are you planning on adding support for it?

Yes! You can use any Identity Provider (IdP) that supports OpenID Connect (OIDC).

I've documented this in https://yolinks.app/docs/getting-started/configuring-an-orga... (scroll down to "Single Sign-On (SSO)"; I'm still trying to figure out a good way for React + React Router and header anchors to play nice together, so apologies for making you scroll). I haven't documented the set up within IdPs like Okta. I've noticed many software vendors have IdP-specific instructions as well, so I may follow suit eventually.

I don't support SAML, but it should be relatively straightforward given that I use Google Identity Provider. I'd be very curious to know if SAML is important to folks.