Swell Note

Message in a bottle simulator. Enjoy a peaceful moment at the beach, reading messages from strangers and sending some into the ether.

Architecture

This project uses:

• HTML/CSS/JS - The frontend is fairly simple, and just uses the tools built into the Web Platform.

• Flask - The API that serves random messages and stores new messages is a simple Flask application. In production, Flask runs under Gunicorn. In the future I may deploy an nginx frontend to Gunicorn to buffer connections.

• SQLite - Data is stored in a local SQLite database. Our database uses the Write Ahead Log (WAL) with NORMAL synchronous behavior. The upshot is that writes and reads don't block each other, allowing surprisingly good performance (~3k writes/second). Writes are guaranteed to be consistent, but we may lose recently written records in the case of a hard reboot while the application is running.

Roadmap

• We need a way to avoid or filter spam
  • Only allow sending a message every 10 minutes. Add some UI and include it in the session data.
  • Allow users the choice of throwing away a message or sending it back out. Delete or block the message from appearing if it is thrown away.
  • Store an identifier in the user's browser and require it to access the API. Store it so that we can quickly identify/delete messages from spammy users.
  • Limit messages to words from an English dictionary.

Art

Art is by April Petry.