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FLCut — Link Shortener for Finite Loop Club

Live: [https://flcut.pdevdat.qzz.io/]

What is this?

FLCut is a URL shortener tool designed keeping in mind for the purpose of Finite Loop Club's events/resoursce sharing using custom URL for easy sharing and avoiding long URLs

Stack

  • Framework: Next.js + TypeScript
  • Database: PostgreSQL via Supabase
  • ORM: Prisma
  • UI: shadcn/ui + Tailwind CSS
  • Deployment: Vercel

Features

  • Shorten any URL to a clean slug
  • Custom aliases (e.g. /flc26)
  • Scheduled links — set a go-live time
  • Expiring links — set an expiry time
  • Click cap — stop redirecting after N clicks
  • Analytics — total clicks, unique clicks, device, referrer
  • Bot filtering — skips known scrappers
  • Dashboard — view, disable, reactivate, delete links

Data Model

The database scheme for this project consists of two tables: Link and AnalyticsEvent. Both are linked by refering the 'id' primary key in Link table.

  • The Link table consists of all the details of the links such as the shortURL, OriginalURL, expiration schedule etc.
  • The AnaliticsEvent table holds all the details of number of clicks, device used, uniqueness and hashed IP Address

The current schema only has 2 tables and avoids a login system and some other features to keep it simple given the deadline for submission, though has a scope for further advancement.

Link

Field Type
id uuid
shortSlug text (unique)
originalUrl text
expiresAt timestamp?
scheduledAt timestamp?
clickCap int?
createdAt timestamp

AnalyticsEvent

Field Type
id uuid
linkId text
timestamp timestamp
referrer text?
device text?
ipHash text?
isUnique bool

If I Only Had 4 Hours

Given a 4 hours duration, I would've focused on setting up the DB first and made only the main page which allowed for creating the links. With that duration I would avoid the dashboard page and alternatively even ORM and use supabase directly with nextjs.

One Tradeoff I Made

I avoided authentication to speed up the build process and avoid complicating the DB

Assumptions I Made

Avoided a user base assuming that the project is meant for internal FLC use and not for general access therefore only the club needs the URL shortner access

What I Would Do Next

Set up user authentication and also add proper onboarding and homepage

Hard Problems — How I Approached Them

Slug generation & collisions

  • Slugs are generated using an NPM module 'nanoid' which generates a 6 digit random code for non custom links.
  • Collisions are avoided while creation by cross verifying with the DB while creation.
  • Keywords like admin, api,dashboard are reserved to avoid future collisions for the same URL.

Scheduling & expiry

  • Scheduled URLs before time are redirected to not-yet page while expired pages are redirected to the expired page

Analytics & uniqueness

  • Unique users are identified using hashed IP and also device type
  • Known basic bot scrappers are blocked before any analytics
  • Analytics such as uniqueness and also number of clicks are counted

Environment Variables

Variable Description
DATABASE_URL PostgreSQL connection string from Supabase

Built by Devdat for Finite Loop Club Tech Team RecruitmentRound 1, 2026-27