2nd YearIntermediateWeb 3-4 weeks
URL Shortener Service
A Bitly-style service that converts long URLs into short codes, redirects on lookup, and tracks click analytics per link.
Node.jsExpressPostgreSQLReactRedis
Find GitHub repos & source code →How to build it — step by step
- 1Encoding: Generate unique short codes (base62 of an auto-increment id or a hash) and store the mapping.
- 2Redirect: On GET /:code, look up the original URL and issue a 301/302 redirect.
- 3Analytics: Log click timestamp, referrer, and device; aggregate counts per link.
- 4Caching: Cache hot code→URL lookups in Redis to reduce database load.
Key features to implement
- ✓Base62 short codes
- ✓Custom aliases
- ✓Click analytics (count, referrer)
- ✓Redis-cached redirects
- ✓Link expiry
💡 Unique twist to stand out
Add QR-code generation for each short link and a simple A/B feature that rotates between two destination URLs.
🎓 What you'll learn
Hashing/encoding, HTTP redirects, caching strategy, and analytics aggregation.