kevinnorris / urlshortener

Third Backend API project for freeCodeCamp

URL shortener

The App

Usage

To shorten a url pass it as a parameter to the apps url as follows [appUrl]/new/[urlToShorten]

• [appUrl] is the url of the application
• [urlToShorten] is the url you wish to shorten

The API will return a JSON object as follows: {"original_url": [urlToShorten], "short_url": [shortUrl]}

Or an error if something went wrong: {"error": [error message]}

---

Shortening Method

I chose to use Bijective functions to encode the database entries auto incrementing ID.

Pros

• This method provides the shortest url's
• This method is the most efficient, no possible collisions (as with hashing), no required db lookups to insert, new links are always added to the end of the db

Cons

• Users can easily browse all links that have been shortened
• Users are unable to choose their own url path for shortened links