Check out the deployed version here!
This app offers reliable URL shortening as well as some random facts and photos of Komodo dragons. This feature is a simple way to make it stand out in the crowded world of URL shorteners. More seriously, I simply chose this theme as I spent almost 2 years on a boat in the Komodo National Park in Indonesia and I kind of miss it!
It's very simple to use. Just paste your link in the form on the home page and submit. You will be redirected to a result page with your shortened link, an image of a Komodo dragon as well as a fact about this giant reptile.
This app is built with Rails 5.0.0.beta3 and Ruby 2.3 on the backend. The databse is Postgresql. The templating language chosen is SLIM, which I find much more concise than the default ERB. This appliation uses javacript to auto select the short URL generated in order to make copying and pasting it more convenient.
Generating the short_url token was what I found tricky. Read more about it on my blog.
I am still not satisfied with my #generate_short_url method. I need to find a way around the possible infinite loop.