URL Shortener
Goal
Create an MVC project allowing a user to bookmark a site obscuring the URL through a shortened link and allowing users the ability to view, share, and rate other user bookmarks.
Objectives
- Make use of Bootstrap and hand-written CSS to style the application
- Redirect users away from the site while tracking their site usage
- Use MVC’s default authentication views, viewmodels, and controllers
- Learn to display certain features to some users but not to others
Tools Used
- ASP.NET MVC
- Entity Framework
- SQL Server
- Razor
- Bootstrap
Features
The Home Index serves a a landing page and allows a user (logged-in or anonymous) to view all publicly available bookmarks. Authentication is required to create a new or favorite an existing bookmark. The ability to like a page is only available to non-owner users who have not previously liked the page.
Table views are used to quickly browse a specific users bookmarks.
A custom route configuration is used to meter link-use as well as to redirect user to the actual URL.
[Route("b/{hashlink}")]
public ActionResult Details(string hashlink, bool? dropClick)
{
BookMark bookMark = db.BookMark.Where(h => h.HashLink == hashlink).FirstOrDefault();
...
ClickLog click = new ClickLog();
click.BookMarkId = bookMark.Id;
click.TimeLog = DateTime.Now;
db.ClickLog.Add(click);
db.SaveChanges();
return Redirect($"http://{bookMark.URL}");
}