Demo projects hosted at freeCodeCamp.rocks are down

freeCodeCamp Support
1

Tell us what’s happening:
It looks like freecodecamp.rocks is down, so it’s not possible to pass the tests on “URL Shortener Microservice” because they depend on that server being alive. (I could be wrong, but regardless, that site shouldn’t be down as it hosts the example projects.)

Test 3 fails because the redirect to the following URL returns an error:
https://timestamp-microservice.freecodecamp.rocks/api/timestamp/1614221346795

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Your project link(s)
https://repl.it/@sethipandi/freeCodeCamp-URL-Shortener-Microservice

solution: https://freecodecamp-url-shortener-microservice.sethipandi.repl.co

Your browser information:
User Agent is: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:85.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/85.0.

Challenge: URL Shortener Microservice

Link to the challenge:

2

Moved over to freeCodeCamp Support since, assuming I’ve understood the issue correctly, the issue lies with the examples being down.

Technically, this could be considered an issue with the tests though as in my opinion, test cases shouldn’t depend on external resources. If external resources are required, then it should at least minimize the number of them.

A better URL to test would’ve been the following:
https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn/apis-and-microservices/apis-and-microservices-projects/exercise-tracker

Since this server has to be available to execute the tests anyway.

3

Thanks for reporting this to us.

Sincerest apologies about the inconvenience. We have now identified the root cause to be an issue with our DNS and Name Servers for these demo projects.

We are working on fixing this ASAP. Kindly allow us a few hours to get these back up, thanks for your patience.

2 Likes
5

You are correct, we should think of decoupling the tests from these example projects. External factors like these should not affect user workflows on the main learning platform.

Hey @moT01 or anybody else available, could you help us investigate how to approach this?

Thanks.

6

Just to mention, Kris and I briefly discussed this: https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/freeCodeCamp/pull/39311#issuecomment-693400784
Summaised:

  • If we want the URL to be unique every time (means the Campers do not need to delete stuff in their DB every test), then the timestamp project suits well
  • Any URL fCC does not have direct control over leads to CORS issues
  • A non-unique alternative could be https://www.freecatphotoapp.com/
7

That’s a good idea. We have control of that URL and could use it for using as a test URL on the projects.

8

A post was split to a new topic: How to access devtools for debugging projects

9

Hi everyone,

We just confirmed that the DNS fix is rolling out and has started resolving across the world.

You should be able to access the demo projects on their URLs normally now. Depending on your geographic location and internet service provider (includes VPN providers, etc.) it could take a few hours to see the applications back up again.

Additionally, we also made a change so that the URL shortener project does not depend on the resources hosted on the demo projects.

You should be able to work on projects and claim certifications as usual.

Sincere apologies for the inconvenience, and thanks again for your patience.

Happy coding.

3 Likes
10

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