## Quote of the Day API

**A secure, rate‑limited microservice** serving curated jokes and quotes from a persistent SQLite database. Built for fun, engineered for production.

---

## 📖 Overview

Quote of the Day is a small but production-minded API designed to demonstrate:

- **Rate limiting** – `flask-limiter` enforces per‑IP request caps to prevent abuse.
- **Persistent storage** – SQLite replaces JSON to ensure atomic reads/writes and avoid race conditions under concurrent access.
- **Proxy awareness** – `ProxyFix` middleware ensures correct client IP logging behind reverse proxies.
- **Organic usage** – The live API has been discovered and now serves hundreds of requests daily.

---

## ✨ Features

- Randomized quote delivery with delivery count tracking
- Plain text and JSON endpoints
- Rate-limited access to prevent abuse
- Systemd-ready deployment with Gunicorn
- SQLite-backed persistence for safe concurrent access

---

## 🗂 Architecture
```
[ Client ]
   |
   v
[ Flask + Gunicorn ]
   |
   v
[ SQLite DB (quotes.db) ]
```

---

## 🚀 Endpoints

| Method | Path         | Description                                | Rate Limit     |
|--------|--------------|--------------------------------------------|----------------|
| GET    | `/`          | HTML frontend (quotes.html)                | N/A            |
| GET    | `/quote`     | Returns a random quote as plain text       | 20/minute      |
| GET    | `/api/quote` | Returns a random quote as JSON             | 50/minute      |

---

## 📦 Running Locally

```bash
# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/patrickbeane/quote-of-the-day.git
cd quote-of-the-day

# (Optional) Create a virtual environment
python3 -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Edit `add-quotes.py` with your favorite quotes
nano add-quotes.py

# Run `add-quotes.py` to generate the DB
python add-quotes.py

# Run the API
python quotes.py

```

Visit `http://<your-server-ip>:5051` for the HTML frontend or `http://<your-server-ip>:5051/api/quote` for JSON output.

---

## 📝 Example Output

```json
{
  "id": 1,
  "quote": "Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.",
  "author": "Albert Einstein",
  "delivered": 3
}
```

## 🛠 Deployment with systemd

For production use, this service can be run behind Gunicorn and managed via systemd.

A sample unit file is included in [`deploy/quotes.service`](deploy/quotes.service):

```bash
sudo cp deploy/quotes.service /etc/systemd/system/
sudo systemctl daemon-reexec
sudo systemctl enable quotes
sudo systemctl start quotes
```

---

## 🔒 Production Considerations

- **Rate limiting** prevents abuse and keeps the service responsive.
- **SQLite** ensures atomic writes and safe concurrent access.
- **ProxyFix** ensures accurate IP logging behind reverse proxies.

---

## 🏗 Production Deployment (on my infra)

```
[ Client ]
   |
   v
[ Hermes (Docker + Caddy) ]
   |
   v
[ Hades (Flask + Gunicorn) ]
   |
   v
[ SQLite DB (quotes.db) ]
```

---

## 📊 Fun Fact

The live API has been hit by automated clients and bots, resulting in some quotes being "delivered" hundreds of times - a real‑world example of why rate limiting and logging matter.

---

## 📜 License

MIT License – free to use, modify, and share.