Build a URL Shortener with Rails 7

In this series, we'll build a URL shortener from scratch. We'll see how Twitter's URL shortener works for tracking view analytics and create our own short codes by creating Base62 encoding from scratch.

Start Series

12 Lessons | 4h 13m | Beginner

URL Shortener Requirements

Sep 18, 2023

We're going to build a URL Shortener in Rails, so where do we start? In this lesson, we'll plan out our project and the features we want to build.

17m

Creating The Link Model

Sep 19, 2023

First things first, we need a Link model to store our

17m

Base62 Encoding Short Codes

Sep 20, 2023

Using Base62, we can take an Integer ID and compress it for short codes in our URLs

12m

Base62 Decoding Short Codes

Sep 21, 2023

Decoding our Base62 encoded short codes is the next challenge

Find By Short Code

Sep 22, 2023

Now that we have Base62 encoding and decoding, we can tell Rails to use this for generating URL params and find

Short URL Link Redirects

Sep 23, 2023

Next, we can build redirecting Short URLs to the URL on the Link

11m

Views Chart for Links

Sep 24, 2023

Analytics for links is a useful feature so lets record Views for links and show them in a graph

28m

Improving the URL Shortener Design

Sep 25, 2023

It's time we start cleaning up the design and UI for a better experience with our URL shortener.

33m

Retrieving Link Metadata with Background Jobs

Sep 26, 2023

We can retrieve the title, description, and OpenGraph metadata for URLs. Since HTTP requests can be slow, we'll implement this metadata lookup in a background job and broadcast to the frontend with Turbo.

13m

Copy Link To Clipboard

Sep 27, 2023

Copy to clipboard is a required feature for a URL shortener. We'll implement this with two JavaScript libraries (clipboardjs and tippy.js) and a Stimulus controller.

11m

Deploying URL Shortener To Production with Hatchbox.io

Sep 28, 2023

We're ready to deploy our URL Shortener to production and we're going to do that using Hatchbox.io

Challenge: Add Users To The URL Shortener

Sep 29, 2023

Anyone can add, edit, and delete any Link in our URL Shortener database. Your challenge is to add users, associate links with them and only allow editing of your own links.

Courses

Rails for Beginners

Advanced Ruby: Behind the Magic

Payments with Rails Master Class

Refactoring Rails

Apps

Hatchbox.io

Jumpstart Rails SaaS Template

Other

Remote Ruby Podcast

Rails Hackathon

Beginner Bounties

Ruby on Rails Job Board