yals - yet another link shortener (w/ custom URLs)

A link shortener that allows you to set custom URLs, expiration dates and manage them from your account.

http://yals.zreo.me/

TODO

• refactor navbar
• add user/login/logout to context
• use context instead of query
• redesign many of the pages
• update this README

Features

• shorten any link

• create an account to manage your links

• set expiry dates for your links

• delete your links whenever you want

• easily share your links with a QR code

Soon

• more functionality to accounts including account settings (change password etc.)

• analytics for your links, such as # of clicks, times, location etc. to better understand who's using your links

• mobile-friendly design

Known issues

• forms clear when changing colour mode

• invalid emails may be accepted when creating accounts (will be fixed by requiring account to be validated)

• some links are not accepted as valid

Setup

You'll need a .env with the following variables MONGODB_URI, SESSION_SECRET (any string for redis to use), REACT_APP_DOMAIN (the domain for your link shortener e.g. yals.zreo.me), REACT_APP_GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID (Google API key for Google authentication), REDISTOGO_URL (your redis to go link)

Other

I tried to plan and keep track of the project using Trello. But I mostly just used Notepad documents.

Here's the stack I used:

• Frontend: React, Chakra UI

• Backend: Node.js/Express, Apollo GraphQL (first time using it, I much prefer it to a RESTful API), Mongoose

• Data: MongoDB, Redis (not sure if i'm using it right, but it's working for storing sessions)

• Forms: react-hook-form (prefer this over formik)

• Hosting: Heroku (tried Vercel and gave up on DigitalOcean)