🔗 SnapLink — Modern URL Shortener

A lightweight full-stack URL shortening app built with Node.js, Express.js, and MongoDB, serving a Tailwind CSS frontend. Paste a long link, get a short one instantly — with live click tracking and QR codes built in.

---

📖 Overview

SnapLink runs as a single Express server: it serves the frontend as static files and exposes the shortening/redirect API from the same app on the same port. There's no separate frontend dev server — clone it, install once, run once.

Tagline from the app itself: "Shorten Links. Track Performance." — an elegant platform to convert clunky URLs into powerful, clean, trackable links with live click analytics.

---

✨ Features

• 🔗 Paste any long URL and shrink it into a short link
• 📋 One-click copy to clipboard (with a "Copied!" confirmation)
• 🔄 Redirect from the short link to the original destination
• 📊 Live click analytics — each shortened link tracks a visit count and timestamped visit history in MongoDB
• 🎯 Dynamic QR code generation for every shortened link, with a download option
• ⚙️ Configure a custom domain/IP to use when generating links
• 📂 "Your Shortened Links" list — view previously created links with their click counts and original URLs
• 🎨 Dark, modern responsive UI styled with Tailwind CSS

---

🛠️ Tech Stack

Layer	Technologies
Frontend	HTML5, Tailwind CSS, JavaScript — served as static files from public/
Backend	Node.js, Express.js
Database	MongoDB (via Mongoose)
QR Codes	goqr.me API

---

📂 Project Structure

url-shortener/
├── controllers/     # Request handlers / business logic
│   └── url.js
├── models/           # Mongoose schema for URL documents
│   └── url.js
├── routes/           # API route definitions
│   └── url.js
├── public/           # Static frontend, served directly by Express
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── style.css
│   └── app.js
├── connect.js         # MongoDB connection setup
├── index.js            # App entry point (starts the server)
├── package.json
└── README.md

---

🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v16 or higher)
• MongoDB running locally on the default port (mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017)

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/your-username/url-shortener.git
cd url-shortener

2. Install dependencies

npm install

3. Make sure MongoDB is running

The app connects to mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/short-url on startup. If your MongoDB runs elsewhere, update the connection string in connect.js.

4. Run the server

npm start

You'll see:

Server is running on port 8000
Connected to MongoDB

Open http://localhost:8000 — the frontend, API, and redirects are all served from this one port.

---

🔌 API Reference

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	/url	Create a shortened URL
GET	/:shortId	Redirect to the original URL and log the visit

---

🎯 Roadmap

• Custom short URL aliases (currently auto-generated)
• User authentication
• Link expiration
• Password-protected links
• Analytics breakdown by location/device (currently tracks visit count + timestamp only)
• Rate limiting and spam protection

---

🤝 Contributing

Contributions, suggestions, and feature requests are welcome. Feel free to fork the repository, open an issue, or submit a pull request.

---

📄 License

This project is open source and available under the MIT License.