How to code URL shortener from scratch?


I am going to explain one of the common approaches used to create URL shortner.

  1. Think of an alphabet we want to use. In your case that’s [a-zA-Z0-9]. It contains 62 letters.
  2. Take an auto-generated, unique numerical key (the auto-incremented id of a MySQL table for example).

    For this example I will use 12510 (125 with a base of 10).

  3. Now you have to convert 12510 to X62 (base 62).

    12510 = 2×621 + 1×620 = [2,1]

    Now map the indices 2 and 1 to your alphabet. This is how your mapping (with an array for example) could look like:

    0  → a
1  → b
...
25 → z
...
52 → 0
61 → 9

    With 2 → c and 1 → b you will receive cb62 as the shortened URL.

    http://shor.ty/cb

How to resolve a shortened URL to the initial ID

The reverse is even easier. You just do a reverse lookup in your alphabet.

  1. e9a62 will be resolved to “4th, 61st, and 0th letter in alphabet”.

    e9a62 = [4,61,0] = 4×622 + 61×621 + 0×620 = 1915810

  2. Now find your database-record with WHERE id = 19158 and do the redirect.

Use of hashcode() and equals()


Tech Read..

Use of hashCode() and equals(). 

Object class provides two methods hashcode() and equals() to represent the identity of an object. It is a common convention that if one method is overridden then other should also be implemented.

Before explaining why, let see what the contract these two methods hold. As per the Java API documentation:

  • Whenever it is invoked on the same object more than once during an execution of a Java application, the hashcode() method must consistently return the same integer, provided no information used in equals() comparisons on the object is modified. This integer need not remain consistent from one execution of an application to another execution of the same application.
  • If two objects are equal according to the equals(object) method, then calling the hashCode() method on each of the two objects must produce the same integer result.
  • It is NOT required that if two objects are…

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Quick Tip: How to Work with GitHub and Multiple Accounts


Sometimes you may need to have multiple github accounts (one for office, one for work , one for girl friend, whatever) .

Lets say you have ssh keys already setup and github is set for one account. Now for new account:

  • Create a new ssh key

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your-email-address"

     Careful while name the file , dont overwrite the existing one .I named it as ~/.ssh/id_rsa_xxx

  • Add the new key to github account

     This is simple enough. Copy the id_rsa_xxx.pub in github > Settings > SSH Keys

  • Create a new config file in  vi ~.ssh/config

        Add following :

#Default GitHub
Host github.com
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
Host github-COMPANY
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_xxxx
 
You are done . Try it out ..
Vola !! Happy coding !!

Ignore transitive dependency in Maven


Maven helps to manage the dependency of JARS . Most of the time it may happen that same JAR file with different versions is being loaded because some other jar files have it as dependency and thus causing the conflicts .

Typical example is have log4j or slf4j jar with different version in spring-xx.jar and junit-xxx.jar . So when you load you classes an conflict may arise and because of incompatible version of same jar file . For e.g. 

<dependency>
	<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
	<artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
	<version>3.2.1.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>

The above jar uses log4j 1.2.17 (you can check the dependency using mvn dependency:tree).

Consider this log4j jar file is conflicting with some other higher version of log4j which is used by other jar. To resolve this issue we would have to remove the conflicting log4j jar from org.springframework.
it can be done as follows :

<dependency>
	<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
	<artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
	<version>3.2.1.RELEASE</version>
         <exclusions>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>log4j</groupId>
                    <artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
            </exclusions>
</dependency>

Cheers..