A Responsive React App

What are you most proud of, and what would you do differently next time?

I’m most proud of getting the frontend and backend working together as a complete application. This project helped me understand how a React frontend communicates with a Node.js/Express API, handles the response, and displays the shortened URLs.

I’m also proud that I built the URL shortening logic and persistence myself instead of keeping everything only on the frontend.

Next time, I would plan the project structure and API endpoints earlier. I would also spend more time thinking about the data flow before writing the code, which would make the development process smoother and reduce debugging later.

What challenges did you encounter, and how did you overcome them?

The biggest challenge was understanding how to connect the React frontend with the Node.js/Express backend. I initially found it confusing to understand how the request, response, and stored data all fit together.

I overcame this by breaking the problem into smaller parts: first testing the backend independently, then sending requests from React, and finally connecting the response to the UI. I also had to learn how to handle validation, errors, URL storage, and generating unique short codes.

Debugging each part separately helped me understand the overall flow instead of trying to solve everything at once.

What specific areas of your project would you like help with?

I would like feedback on my overall project structure, especially how I separated the React frontend from the Node.js/Express backend.

I would also appreciate feedback on whether my API design and URL-shortening logic are structured well, and suggestions for improving the code quality, error handling, and data persistence.

I’m particularly interested in learning how I could improve this project before moving from a simple JSON-file database to a proper database.