URL Shortener Server

This is an implementation of URL Shortener Server, where clients can pass long URL and get back shortened version of it.

URL-Shortener-Demo.mov

Requirements

The server is written in Node v17 and Express v4. You will also need the MongoDB database to run the server.

Setup

Clone the repo by doing

git clone https://github.com/PallaviTS/URL-Shortener.git

With Node, NPM and MongoDB installed on your system you can install the application locally using

$ npm install

The application uses a local MongoDB database. You can update the DATABASE_URL in .env file to work with a different DB.

Express comes with a local development server. To run the application use

$ npm start

Which starts the application and lets it listen on port 3000.

You can also run the test suite with

$ npm run test

and linter with

$ npm run lint

Usage

With the server running you can make HTTP requests to it in order to create short URLs and call them afterwards.

The URL Shortener server provides one resource endpoint /shortUrls that allows you to list, show, and create urls. The server handles JSON payloads and an endpoint definition might look like this:

Create a new short URL

curl -d '{"fullUrl":"https://www.monkeyuser.com/2019/bug-fixing-ways/"}' -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST http://localhost:3000/shortUrls

will return unique short url with tier.app- as base

{
    "full": "https://www.monkeyuser.com/2019/bug-fixing-ways",
    "short": "tier.app-_RgWjL-tt"
}

Get all short URLs with visits

curl -X GET http://localhost:3000/shortUrls

will return

[
    {
        "visitCount": 1,
        "full": "https://www.monkeyuser.com/2019/bug-fixing-ways",
        "short": "tier.app-_RgWjL-tt"
    }
]

Get a short URL by short ID

curl -X GET http://localhost:3000/shortUrls/tier.app-_RgWjL-tt

will redirect https://www.monkeyuser.com/2019/bug-fixing-ways/

Errors and Validation

The server implements some validation:

Only GET /shortUrls, POST /shortUrls and GET /shortUrls/:shortUrl are allowed, all other Path and Method combinations respond with 405 error.
Full URL in POST request needs to be valid and present
Server returns error stacktrace only for dev environment and on production no data is leaked

When validation fails or when short URL cannot be found, the server responds with message, for example:

GET /shortUrls/10

404 Not Found
{
    "message": "10 Not found"
}

POST /shortUrls with Body {"fullUrl":"not an URL"}

400 Not Found

{
    "message": "Full url is invalid",
    "error": {
        "status": 400
    }
}

Possible improvements

When accessing an existing endpoint path with a different HTTP method the server will respond with 405 Method Not Allowed, we could add the Allow response header with the method(s) currently supported
Error messages, especially for endpoint path/method combinations not allowed, can be improved to include path/method in response
Sucess response, could include ids and respond with 201 status code depending on clients requirement

PallaviTS / URL-Shortener