- I can POST a URL to
[project_url]/api/shorturl/newand I will receive a shortened URL in the JSON response. Example :{"original_url":"www.google.com","short_url":1} - If I pass an invalid URL that doesn't follow the valid
http(s)://www.example.com(/more/routes)format, the JSON response will contain an error like{"error":"invalid URL"}. HINT: to be sure that the submitted url points to a valid site you can use the functiondns.lookup(host, cb)from thednscore module. - When I visit the shortened URL with
GET [project_url]/api/shorturl/[short_url], it will redirect me to my original link.
POST [project_url]/api/shorturl/new - body (urlencoded): 'url=https://www.google.com/'
GET [project_url]/api/shorturl/1
At the backend the app is implemented with Node.js, Express and Mongoose/MongoDB. The server source can be found in server.js. A demo can be found at the link below. At the frontend the home page has React/Redux web forms to create and visit short URLs. React/Redux source can be found at views/src/, and it was built with Parcel. Source maps were generated and the original source can be viewed in browser developer tools.
As explained above you can also create short URLs with:
POST https://akoz002-nodejs-urlshortener.herokuapp.com/api/shorturl/new
and visit short URLs with:
GET https://akoz002-nodejs-urlshortener.herokuapp.com/api/shorturl/[short_url]
A set of basic tests can be found at tests/tests.js. To execute the tests in a local environment, first start the server with npm start. Environment variable DB_URI is used by the app to locate the MongoDB database server. This defaults to a local database server at mongodb://localhost/url-shortener.
Then to execute the tests run npm test. Environment variable APP_URL is used by the tests to locate the app server. This defaults to a local server at http://localhost:3000/api/shorturl/. You can also define a local .env file with these parameters, and it will be read by the app.