Shurly 0.1
==========

A URL shortener written in node.js using MongoDB for data storage.

This is a rewrite of a PHP/memcachedb-based shortner I wrote a while ago
(http://jmp.li/) and was written to enable me to get to know node.js a lot
better.

It does not use any of the web frameworks that are becoming available for
node.js since that would 1) unnecessarily slow the thing down, and 2) go
against the point which was to get to know node.js.

Install
=======

* Install node.js and the node-mongodb-native module
* Install MongoDB and start mongod
* Modify the configuration options in config.js as required
* Run it: node shurly.js

Customisation
=============

The templates are in the static folder, and they're intentionally not designed
to be ultra flexible. There's a separate header and footer, and several of the
templates have placeholders that look like %%var%%.

Beyond that you could implement another data provider. I've only implemented a
MongoDB provider, but in a way that allows multiple engines to be made
available. I'll likely implement a MySQL provider with memcache-based caching
as a technical exercise at some point. See the dataProviders folder for more
info.

The templates are cached in memory at startup so will not be reloaded while
shurly is running.

Known issues
============

There is a potential race condition when new URLs are created which I may or
may not get around to addressing. Other than that I think it's pretty solid.
Feel free to let me know otherwise - this is a learning experience!

Git conventions
===============

Note that this project uses git-flow. See the following for more info...

* http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
* http://github.com/nvie/gitflow

Live demo?
==========

Not as yet, but it may replace the backend of http://jmp.li/ after further
testing.

Author
======

* Stuart Dallas
* 3ft9 Ltd
* http://3ft9.com/
* Email is my first name at the domain name

March 9th, 2011 @ 4:02am