urly

Proof of concept url shortener

This project uses Koa to implement a light-weight URL shortener service.

Getting starting

To get started, install the dependencies and running the dev server.

npm install
npm run start:dev

Once the server is started, open your browser to http://localhost:3000

You can chose a different port by defining the PORT environment variable.

PORT=3030 npm run start:dev

Configuration

The configuration parameters can be set either by an environment variable or a through a .env file stored in the root of the project. Below are the configurable parameters along with their default values:

Parameter	Description	Default
PORT	HTTP port server listens on	3000
BASE_URL	url to use as the base shortener	http://localhost:3000
DB_PATH	path to store the db. If the file doesn't exist, it will be created	`src/db/urly.db`

Example .env file

A .env file can store all customized configurations

BASE_URL="https://my.customurl.com"

PORT=2600

# comments are allowed
DB_PATH=src/db/new.db

Example using environment variables

The following defines the base URL that is used when generating a shortened link:

BASE_URL=https://myurl.com npm start

API

This is basic REST API documentation. We eventually will move this to use swagger.

NOTE: For now, any URL that matches a 6 digit hexadecimal hash (/[a-z0-9])will be redirected to google.com. Once an implementation is in place, this will change. As a test, navigate to http://localhost:3000/cafe12.

GET /url/:shortId

Gets full URL from short id.

Method: GET
Endpoint: /url/:shortId

Curl command

curl http://localhost:3000/api/url/cab1234

POST /url

Creates post shorten

Method: POST
Endpoint: /url/
Body: shortId

Curl command

curl http://localhost:3000/api/url/ -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"fullUrl": "https://asf.com"}'

Debugging Output

This project uses the debug package to allow you to selectively display debug messages. The debug output depends on the DEBUG environment variable. If you set the value to * you will see all the debug information but you can optionally fine-tune what is displayed. Below are a few examples:

Displaying all debug output while running the serve

DEBUG=* npm start

Displaying Database debug output while running unit tests

DEBUG=db:* npm run test:watch

Unit test

The unit test are managed with Jest and can be run with the npm test command. While developing, add/modify unit tests in the the test folder. You can optionally run unit test in watch mode by running the following command:

npm run test:watch

LonnyGomes/urly