How do I create a URL shortener?

Question

I want to create a URL shortener service where you can write a long URL into an input field and the service shortens the URL to \"http://www.example.org/abcdef\

Answer 1

Implementation in Scala:

class Encoder(alphabet: String) extends (Long => String) {

  val Base = alphabet.size

  override def apply(number: Long) = {
    def encode(current: Long): List[Int] = {
      if (current == 0) Nil
      else (current % Base).toInt :: encode(current / Base)
    }
    encode(number).reverse
      .map(current => alphabet.charAt(current)).mkString
  }
}

class Decoder(alphabet: String) extends (String => Long) {

  val Base = alphabet.size

  override def apply(string: String) = {
    def decode(current: Long, encodedPart: String): Long = {
      if (encodedPart.size == 0) current
      else decode(current * Base + alphabet.indexOf(encodedPart.head),encodedPart.tail)
    }
    decode(0,string)
  }
}

Test example with Scala test:

import org.scalatest.{FlatSpec, Matchers}

class DecoderAndEncoderTest extends FlatSpec with Matchers {

  val Alphabet = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789"

  "A number with base 10" should "be correctly encoded into base 62 string" in {
    val encoder = new Encoder(Alphabet)
    encoder(127) should be ("cd")
    encoder(543513414) should be ("KWGPy")
  }

  "A base 62 string" should "be correctly decoded into a number with base 10" in {
    val decoder = new Decoder(Alphabet)
    decoder("cd") should be (127)
    decoder("KWGPy") should be (543513414)
  }

}