Shortly URL Shortening

Frontend Mentor - Shortly URL shortening API Challenge solution

This is a solution to the Shortly URL shortening API Challenge challenge on Frontend Mentor. Frontend Mentor challenges help you improve your coding skills by building realistic projects.

Table of contents

• Overview
  • The challenge
  • Links
• My process
  • Built with
  • What I learned
  • Continued development
  • Useful resources
• Author
• Acknowledgments

Overview

The challenge

Users should be able to:

• View the optimal layout for the site depending on their device's screen size.
• Shorten any valid URL.
• See a list of their shortened links, even after refreshing the browser.
• Copy the shortened link to their clipboard in a single click.
• Receive an error message when the form is submitted if:
  • The input field is empty

Additional things that I did:

• Implemented a check that will stop an invalid URL from being sent to the API.
• The error display will show the API error message in case a URL is rejected. (this usually contains the reason the URL is rejected)

Links

• Solution URL: https://www.frontendmentor.io/solutions/responsive-url-shortening-site-using-react-scss-api-4Di8Dh_Xz
• Live Site URL: http://kingwell47.github.io/url-shortnening

My process

Built with

• Semantic HTML5 markup
• CSS custom properties
• SCSS
• Flexbox
• Mobile-first workflow
• React
  • JS library

What I learned

Picked this one as API practice and it was really fun overall!

async function getShortenenedUrl(originalUrl) {
  const response = await fetch(
    "https://api.shrtco.de/v2/shorten?url=" + originalUrl
  );
  const { ok, error, result } = await response.json();
  if (ok) {
    return handleSuccess({
      originalUrl: "https://" + originalUrl,
      shortUrl: result.full_short_link2,
    });
  } else {
    return handleError(error);
  }
}

Using "clamp" for font-sizing makes responsive text way easier:

&__title {
  font-size: clamp(fnc.rem(40), 6vw, fnc.rem(80));
  color: var(--color-neutral-300);
}

Handling errors is one of the things I really wanted to learn about:

const handleError = (errMessage) => {
  setError(true);
  setProcessing(false);
  if (errMessage === undefined) return setErrorMessage("Please add a link");
  setErrorMessage(errMessage);
};

Continued development

Adding an animation for the "Shorten it!" button seems like a good place to improve this design.

A way to delete previously shortenend URLs or clear the local storage also could be implemented.

Useful resources

• min(), max(), and clamp() are CSS magic! by Kevin Powell
  • Using these functions made the design the most responsive one I've coded yet.
• Easier Error Handling Using async await in JavaScript by Jesse Warden
  • This video helped me figure out how to handle the API responses and set-up error handling.
• Using Async/Await with the Fetch API - JavaScript Tutorial by Dcode
  • Good instructions on how to set-up the Fetch function for this API.
• useLocalStorage from useHooks.com
  • Used to set up storing past shortened links.

Author

• Website - Joel P. Doctor
• Frontend Mentor - @kingwell47
• Twitter - @kingwell47
• LinkedIn - Joel P. Doctor

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Ms. Jessica Chan (Coder Coder) and all the other YouTube creators making their knowledge available!