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Want recruiters attention? Build this 🔥 project in ⌚ 5 minutes to 🚀 your portfolio!

Brandon on October 26, 2020

So you're ready to start creating a portfolio but can't think of any ideas? Here's one AMAZING idea to demonstrate full stack skills and impress an...

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ItsThatHexagonGuy • Oct 26 '20

It'll take just 5 minutes if you copy/paste everything from the post

Nico • Oct 26 '20

Might as well fork it and call it yours

Brandon • Oct 26 '20

Thanks for the comment Nico 😄 this project isn't hosted on my Github at this time!

Nico • Oct 26 '20

Don’t get me wrong, I love the content, it just feels like faking it. If I were to put this and get attention by a hiring manager, I’d be lying if I said I knew how I got to make this to work lol

Brandon • Oct 26 '20

Not at all! I appreciate that! You're completely right! the idea is to get something built as quickly as possible and use that to develop and expand their (who ever builds this) knowledge. When i first learned how to code it took such a long time for me to understand concepts and tools because i just didn't build any real life projects!

Greg • Oct 30 '20

Even so, it won't. Setting up mongodb, installing dependencies... 20 minutes at least. :|

Brandon • Oct 26 '20

Thanks for the comment Mydrax! It might take just 5 minutes if you're a fast reader 😄

Cat • Oct 27 '20

I think you should expand your opening paragraph to make it clearer what is being built with this project. You can guess it's a URL shortener with "mkdir url-shortener", but it would be good if this was written explicitly, and also a few words on the features/functionalities that will be implemented.

Brandon • Oct 27 '20

Thanks for the feedback! Those are some solid suggestions and I'll definitely implement them! 😄

z2lai • Oct 28 '20

Nice example code with comments, but I think you forgot to mention what the heck you are building. Also, it looks like you didn't include how to set up the MongoDB database.

Brandon • Oct 28 '20

Thanks for the comment z2lai! You're right, i could have made it more clear in the introduction what was being built. It is mentioned in the project set up section however 😄 And you're right! my previous blog post mentions this! hope that helps 😄

Oscar • Oct 29 '20 • Edited

I think it would be helpful to link to your previous post for people that want to run the entire application you walk us through. Well done!

Brandon • Oct 29 '20

That's true! I'll make sure to improve things with my next blog post. Thanks for the feedback! 😇

Brian Hogg • Oct 28 '20

On my browser, there's a weirdly huge graphic repeated after every step; anyone else seeing that?

andy • Oct 30 '20 • Edited

I saw it in Vivaldi so pasted the url into chrome where it seems fine.
Tried to upload an image but for some reason that's not working...

Brandon • Oct 29 '20

Hey Brian! Thanks for leaving a comment! Can you share what this graphic looks like? What browser are you using? Thanks ! 😄

Brian Hogg • Oct 30 '20

It seems like it's looking fine now; maybe there was a dev.to issue that got resolved, I didn't take a screenshot when I noticed the issue, unfortunately. The image I saw was black with white braces, sort of like an icon you might use around a QR code in an icon to denote an ability to scan, but with nothing inside it.

Alexander B.K. • Oct 31 '20

The 1st time I load this page, I experienced the same thing. After I reloaded, everything was fine.

andyst81 • Oct 30 '20

I like this project. It's very similar to a freeCodeCamp project in the API and Microservices course, which is one of the certificates I enjoyed the most.

I've been thinking of going back to my answer for that activity and personalising it. I might just do it after reading this. Thank you OP.

Max B • Oct 26 '20

Hey Brandon,

Cool tutorial. How do you start the project locally ?

Thanks

Brandon • Oct 26 '20

Great question Max! Simple run node server/index.js in a terminal from the root of your project!

Oscar • Oct 29 '20 • Edited

Including this in the article may be helpful along with how to run the frontend on a browser (i.e. In your browser address bar navigate to "localhost:8080/. I've learned that we should assume readers know the bare minimum and I think your guide does a good job so far. Just a couple more bits of information for the newcomers.

Brandon • Oct 29 '20

Hey Oscar thanks for commenting! That's a very good point and I appreciate the feedback! I'm going to take all this on board for my future posts and hopefully improve! 🤯

Alexander B.K. • Oct 31 '20

"Want recruiters attention ?"
Do you think this will be enough when the recruiters want to see some skills in React/Angular/Vue ? We know a lot of job requirements state this thing among other things.
For me, using the same project, in order to enhance impression for them, I may replace all related codes in front end with codes written in React + Bootstrap 4.
As for backend :

I will use mySQL, with or without ORM, instead of MongoDB.
Beside Express, I will probably try Hapi too. So there can two code versions : one written with Express, the other with Hapi. One thing that I like in your approach is that you use MVC pattern, although only model and controller. I am quite familiar with this architecture pattern, because in my current real project (not in github), I use PHP + Laravel. I am relatively new in Node.js, and actually still learning, so maybe I will write this Node.js project in github. Of course I will try it locally before deployment.

Thanks for sharing your idea and approach in creating a portfolio.

imacchiavello • Oct 26 '20

Thank you for the tutorial brandon.

Brandon • Oct 26 '20

Thanks for the comment imacchiavello ! 😄

Sander van den Akker • Oct 29 '20 • Edited

Very nice. In order to really impress a recruiter you could consider TDD and add some unit tests.

Brandon • Oct 29 '20

Very true! Thanks for your comment Sander ! 🙌

Paul Delcogliano • Nov 18 '20

I think this is a great, fun, project. Would you mind if I port it to .Net and make it available on GitHub?

Brandon • Nov 23 '20

Go ahead!

Paul Delcogliano • Feb 10 '21

Hi Brandon,

It took me a while longer than expected, but I finally have a working port of your app in .Net Core. I am planning on a series of posts to describe my project. I also made my source code available on GitHub. Would you mind linking to my Dev.to post and GitHub repo? Here are the URLs: dev.to/pdelco/a-reference-applicat... and github.com/pdelco/m-url for generating shortened URLs

I appreciate it!

Kieran • Oct 29 '20

Nice Project. It reminds me of the Url Shortener on FreeCodeCamp. This took me MAYBE in minutes real-time to crank out, with typing and adding notes. The title is "Build it in 5 minutes", not "Hold my Hand as I walk you through the finer points of Express", so I'm not sure why people are complaining that you don't go into explicit detail regarding setup...
If you can't kick this little app out quickly, you're probably not ready to talk to recruiters.

Brandon • Oct 29 '20

Thanks for commenting Kieran!

I actually haven't seen that one so I will have to check it out!

I appreciate the support! I think many people have viewed the post with different expectations of how much support this post would provide for the more junior devs out there! Which is totally valid! I'm working to maintain a balance to not bore the more experienced viewers whilst still being able to provide value to the juniors! 💩

Jenuel Oras Ganawed • Oct 30 '20

wow, this was a nice Idea. Thanks, @brandonkylebailey , More content like this is very useful. Create more sample projects where people will learn new Ideas.