short-host

Represent any IPv4 based host like A.B.C.D:P as a short sequence of 1 to 10 chars:

• A, B, C and D are IPv4 numbers from 0 to 255
• P is a network port number from 0 to 65535
• Generated chars are lowercase letters or numbers (only 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7)

Examples

• 192.168.0.15:8080 => p
• 192.168.0.27:8080 => bw
• 192.168.1.182:5173 => 3n
• 192.168.0.27:4200 => bwd
• 192.168.1.85:3000 => vkc
• 192.168.1.111:443 => w6os
• 192.168.27.81:4444 => dniqr
• 192.168.27.81:7812 => dnixuq
• 4.15.167.243:8080 => aqh2p4y
• 4.15.167.243:123 => aqh2p44s
• 4.15.167.243:2345 => aqh2p42j6
• 4.15.167.243:56789 => aqh2p4zxov

Why?

1. I wanted to have fun with a silly idea
2. I sometimes need to browse a local dev server on another device of my local network but it's very annoying to type the IP address and the port

How to use?

• Use the bookmarklet below to generate the short host code from device A
• Add this bookmark to browse the short host on device B

bookmarklet:

javascript:(function()%7Bvar%20url%20%3D%20new%20URL('https%3A%2F%2Fhsablonniere.github.io%2Fshort-host')%3B%0Aurl.searchParams.set('host'%2C%20location.host)%3B%0Alocation.href%20%3D%20url.toString()%3B%7D)()%3B

npm library

You can use this in your projects to display short hosts.

Installation

npm install short-host

JavaScript usage

import { toShortHost, fromShortHost } from 'short-host';

console.log(toShortHost('192.168.0.27:8080'));
// => "bw"

console.log(fromShortHost('bw'));
// => "192.168.0.27:8080"

Details

The main goals and constraints were:

• Focus on local IPs starting with 192.168, especially 192.168.0 and 192.168.1.
• Favor HTTP ports often used in local dev like 8080, 5173 or 3000
• Be able to represent any IPv4 and port

You can have a look at IMPLEMENTATION_DETAILS.md to learn how the encoding/decoding works.