Intro to URL shorter

In this repo there is a GO(Golang) CLI application which can shorten a URL. Alternative to the Bit.ly or well known google services.

Basic operating principle

• Get URL
  • Possible to get a standard websiste based on its URL and fethc it in text form or open in the browser
  • Fetch based on short URL, text or browser
• Lengthen URL
  • Look up short URL original name
• Shorten URL
  • Generate short URL and store it

User instructions

Assumes docker is installed on the host computer

1. Clone the repo
2. cd repo
3. docker run . -t <image name>
4. docker run -it <image name> /bin/bash
5. (cd code/shortener) -> supposed to start up in this directory
6. shortener -h
7. On Linux systems the binary can be copied out and used natively so the "open in browser" functinality is available. (docker cp...)

Developer mode

1. Repear steps 1-3
2. docker run -it -v <abs/path/to/repo>:/code <image name> /bin/bash (pontentially volume mount can also be used, here binding mount due to simplicity of use)
3. Run the tests

• cd /code/shortener/dbman
• go test dbman_test.go dbman.go

4. Run the app: go run main.go <cmd> <flags>
5. Build the app: go build -o <binary name> main.go

Improvement points

1. More extensive tests
2. Application level itegration/regressions tests
3. Remove code duplication in some places
4. Remove the necessity of storing the short URL-s

• Long URL's can be found buy decoding the URI after fake.it/<URI> , which provides ID of the original URL to be fetched. This increases performance and consumes less resources.

5. Cross compilation does not work correctly

• for mac do env GOOS="darwin" go build -o <name> main.go, however the application is producing errors, likely incompatibility with the SQLlite3 driver.

6. Extending the application to a server-client app could be easily done via (e.g.) gRPC. See: https://grpc.io/docs/tutorials/basic/go/ or HTTP server(REST) https://golang.org/doc/articles/wiki/