URL Shortener

This is a demo web application implementing a URL shortener using TypeScript, Express and React with an in-memory database persisted on-disk.

Launch the app locally

The app repo is shipped with a Docker Compose file alowing one step launch of the app on your local machine. Run the commands below to get the app up and running:

git clone git@github.com:optiman917/url-shortener.git
cd url-shortener
docker-compose up

Let Docker do its heavy-lifting for a couple of minutes and as soon as you see the below log line, go ahead and navigate your browser to http://localhost:8000 and start playing around with your own local URL shortener.

Server is running on http://localhost:8000

Implemented Features

Build a web page with a form for entering a URL
When the form is submitted, return a shortened version of the URL
Save a record of the shortened URL to a database
Ensure the slug of the URL (abc123 in the screenshot above) is unique
When the shortened URL is accessed, redirect to the stored URL
If an invalid slug is accessed, display a 404 Not Found page
Validate the URL provided is an actual URL
Display an error message if invalid
Make it easy to copy the shortened URL to the clipboard
Add rate-limiting to prevent bad-actors from spamming the service