⚡ URL Shortener Microservice for freeCodeCamp

• Creates a url short ID and stores it in a database with the original url
• Adding the shortID in a url address will redirect to the original website
• This was part of the FreeCodeCamp exercises for Front End Certification
• Note: mLab MongoDB Heroku add-on has been shut down - suggest MongoDB Atlas (free tier) is used instead
• Note: to open web links in a new window use: ctrl+click on link

📄 Table of contents

• ⚡ URL Shortener Microservice for freeCodeCamp
  • 📄 Table of contents
  • 📚 General info
  • 📷 Screenshots
  • 📶 Technologies
  • 💾 Setup
  • 💻 Code Examples
  • 🆒 Features
  • 📋 Status & To-Do List
  • 👏 Inspiration
  • 📁 License
  • ✉️ Contact

📚 General info

• Original instructions (User Stories) from FCC:

1. I can POST a URL to [project_url]/api/shorturl/new and I will receive a shortened URL in the JSON response. Example : {"original_url":"www.google.com","short_url":1} 2. 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 function dns.lookup(host, cb) from the dns core module. 3. When I visit the shortened URL, it will redirect me to my original link. 4. [this_project_url]/api/shorturl/3 will redirect to http://forum.freecodecamp.com

• MongoDB Cloud Atlas database set up to use Google Cloud Storage.
• Example: POST [project_url]/api/shorturl/new - body (urlencoded) : url=https://www.google.com

📷 Screenshots

. .

📶 Technologies

• Node v12 javaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine
• Express v5 Fast, unopinionated, minimalist web framework for Node.js
• MongoDB Atlas cloud-based NoSQL database
• mongoose v5 object modelling for node.js.
• dbs v0.2.2 DNS Server with a web UI and Redis configuration store
• shortid v2 to generate short non-sequential url-friendly unique ids
• Cors v2 node.js package for providing Connect/Express middleware that can be used to enable CORS with various options.

💾 Setup

• Create MongoDB Atlas Cloud database (or local installed MongoDB database) and add user access/database credentials (USER_NAME, USER_PASSWORD, DB_CLUSTER, PORT, DB_NAME & SESSION_SECRET) to a new .env file. These are used in server.js.
• Add your IP address to MongoDB Atlas Network Access whitelist. Or simply whitelist all (IP address 0.0.0.0/0).
• Run node server.js for a dev server. Navigate to http://localhost:4000/.
• The app will not automatically reload if you change any of the source files.

💻 Code Examples

• extract from server.js to check url is valid then generate short url using npm shortid module then save both in database

//use dns lookup function to check url is valid
dns.lookup(parsedURL.host, (err, address) => {
	if (address === undefined) {
		res.json({
			error:
			'This url failed the formatting test - check and try again. ' +
			err,
		});
	} else {
		const data = new shortURL({
			originalURL: prependHttp(originalURL),
			shortenedURL: shortid.generate(),
		});
		console.log(data);

		data.save((err) => {
			if (err) {
				console.log(err);
				return res.send('error: unable to save to database');
			}
				console.log('all OK');
		});
		res.send(data);
	}
});

🆒 Features

• Common MongoDB Atlas Cloud connection method used to save a lot of time with multiple projects.

📋 Status & To-Do List

• Status: Working. Nothing to stop the same url being saved in the database multiple times with different shortIDs.
• To-Do: add a check to prevent duplicate websites having different shortIDs in the database. Replace var with const & let

👏 Inspiration

• freeCodeCamp's APIs and Microservices Projects - URL Shortener Microservice

📁 License

• This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license.

✉️ Contact

• Repo created by ABateman, email: [email protected]