Back End Development and APIs - Url shortener project tests failing

[ianmartinandres]

My code seems to be working fine but I can’t get second and third tests to pass.

This is my index.js:

require('dotenv').config();
const express = require('express');
const cors = require('cors');
const app = express();
const bodyParser = require("body-parser")
const dns = require('node:dns');
const { Console } = require('node:console');
const urlArrays = []

// Basic Configuration
const port = process.env.PORT || 3000;
app.use("/", bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false }))

app.use(cors());

app.use('/public', express.static(`${process.cwd()}/public`));

app.get('/', function (req, res) {
  res.sendFile(process.cwd() + '/views/index.html');
});

app.post("/api/shorturl", (req, res, next) => {
  let url = req.body.url
  const regex = /^https?:\/\//i
  const regex2 = /\/+$/
  let dnsUrl = url.replace(regex, "")
  dnsUrl = dnsUrl.replace(regex2, "")
  dns.lookup(dnsUrl, (err, address, family) => {
    if (err) {
      res.json({ "error": 'invalid url' })
    } else {
      urlArrays.push(url)
      res.json({ "original_url": url, "short_url": (urlArrays.length - 1) })
    }
  })
})

app.get('/api/shorturl/:id', (req, res) => {
  res.redirect(urlArrays[req.params.id])
})

app.listen(port, function () {
  console.log(`Listening on port ${port}`);
});

Here’s my source code in case that’s not enough: boilerplate-project-urlshortener - Node.js Repl - Replit

Thank you I appreciate the help

[bvanb]

If I enter www.thisisavalidurl.com , I get a response of “invalid url.”

[bvanb]

Is it your position (and that of the tests) that a URL that is not currently registered, or a URL that is missing an http:// prefix, should be considered “invalid”?

[bvanb]

In that case, I can make three observations:

1. The project accepts URLs without common prefixes, such as www.google.com or even google.com |EDIT| Not requiring an http:// prefix should not be a problem, as the tests submit several non-prefixed URLs that are expected to be shortened.
2. The project produces a new short URL each time I enter the same original URL, rather than returning the existing short URL. (I thought this was a test case, but I don’t see it on the assignment page now)
3. When I attempt to visit a short URL for a link that does not include the http:// prefix, I get the following error:

This page isn’t working
boilerplate-project-urlshortener.martinian.repl.co redirected you too many times.
Try clearing your cookies.
ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS

|EDIT|
The key issue seems to be that your URL shortener cannot handle anything other than a domain name. It will reject a URL like https://www.reddit.com/r/tea/ or boilerplate-project-urlshortener.martinian.repl.co/?v=1667184004712, which is one of the URLs that may be submitted by the test.

[ianmartinandres]

Thank you! The issue was indeed that it could handle only domain names.

I solved it by changing my POST handler to :

app.post("/api/shorturl", (req, res, next) => {
  let url = req.body.url
  dns.lookup(new URL(url).hostname, (err, address, family) => {
    if (err) {
      console.log(err)
      res.json({ "error": 'invalid url' })
    } else {
      console.log('Valid URL :' + url)
      urlArrays.push(url)
      res.json({ "original_url": url, "short_url": (urlArrays.length - 1) })
      console.log(urlArrays)
    }
  })
})

[ianmartinandres]

Yeah I am aware it is not the best practice. I decided to use an array just to focus on the logic of the project itself. I’m now starting the Excercise Tracker where I will implement a Mongo DB.