URL Shortener

This is a small-but-functional URL Shortener. Your job is to make it more functional!

Project Objectives

See the project wiki for details about what you should work on.

This project is meant to be an introduction to Rails "best practices" as well as an overview of the major moving parts of Rails. Take the time to look at all the various components, especially

• The routing file at routes.rb
• The Link model at app/models/link.rb
• The migrations in the db/migrate directory
• The Gemfile
• The RSpec tests in the spec directory

Getting Started

Note: In the commands below, $ represents your shell prompt, not part of the command to be executed.

1. Fork this repository into your own GitHub account

2. Clone your copy of the repository onto your local machine

3. Install the necessary Ruby gems by running

   $ bundle install --without production
   

   Note: We use --without production because the production environment (Heroku) requires the Ruby PostgreSQL gem (pg). This gem can't be installed unless you're running your own local instance of PostgreSQL.

4. Create a database.yml file by copying the example SQLite3 configuration file

   $ cp config/database.sqlite3.yml config/database.yml
   

   Note: We've added database.yml to the .gitignore file, which is standard practice. This is so that two developers with different local environments can have different database.yml files without interfering with each other.

5. Create an empty database by running

   $ bundle exec rake db:setup
   

6. Create a .env file by copying the example file

   $ cp .env.example .env
   

   Note: We've added .env to the .gitignore file, which is standard practice. The .env file is meant to contain environment-specific information, e.g., an API key belonging to a particular developer. In production, you'll use heroku set and heroku config to configure environment variables.

7. Create the config/secrets.yml file, which contains the secret token used to cryptographically sign your application's sessions. Run:

   $ rake secret:create_file
   

8. Run the Rails application with

   $ bundle exec rails server
   

9. Visit http://localhost:3000 in your browser.