API Design

Define the APIs expected from the system. This is your chance to analyze and define the read and write paths so that you can come up with the high-level design...

Here are my endpoints:

GET getLongURL: String shortURL -> which used to retrieve the full URL by taking the shortURL as an input parameter.
POST generateShortURL: String fullURL -> which used to generate and return the short URL, by taking the full/long URL as an input parameter.

So for error handling, we have the following key aspects to consider.

for GET getLongURL: String shortURL, if the shortURL given is not found in our database (we will need to further polish it, as the design my require a K-V store db like Redis), it could be permanently deleted. In that case, we could be returning a standard 400 error, with a nice user interface and message to the user.
POST generateShortURL: String fullURL. If the user is sending in a duplicated URL (let's talk about the retrieving full URL logic later), our design can handle it by redirecting the user by 302 status code, to GET getShortURL: String longUR.

As for Rate Limiting, yes, a rate limiting is useful, considering this is a shortenURL tool, so my preferrenced design would be setting this rate limiter to be allow for GET a maximum two visit per ip per device, and for POST, one visit per ip per device. What do you think? (To the coach: this is something I really do NOT know what is the interviewer expecting)

State Code: We can do 200 for success, with HTTP response. 400 for GET as a non-existing URL. 302 for a redirect to the original URL

Now the real question is, should we validate whether the URL is live or not, my guess is YES. We should be validating the URL beforehand, as we are targeting a large scale system, so if the URL itself is a dead link, that's something affecting our reliability. So later I will add such a component to verify the URL's status

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