56 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
56 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
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# History of freegeoip.net
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The freegeoip software is the result of a web server research project that
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started in 2009, written in Python and hosted on
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[Google App Engine](http://appengine.google.com). It was rapidly adopted by
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many developers around the world due to its simplistic and straightforward
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HTTP API, causing the free account on GAE to exceed its quota every day
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after few hours of operation.
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A year later freegeoip 1.0 was released, and the freegeoip.net domain
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moved over to its own server infrastructure. The software was rewritten
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using the [Cyclone](http://cyclone.io) web framework, backed by
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[Twisted](http://twistedmatrix.com) and [PyPy](http://pypy.org) in
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production. That's when the first database management tool was created,
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a script that would download many pieces of information from the Internet
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to create the IP database, an sqlite flat file used by the server.
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This version of the Python server shipped with a much better front-end as
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well, but still as a server-side rendered template inherited from the GAE
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version. It was only circa 2011 that freegeoip got its first standalone
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front-end based on jQuery, and is when Twitter bootstrap was first used.
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Python played an important role in the early life of freegeoip and
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allowed the service to grow and evolve fast. It provided a lot of
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flexibility in building and maintaining the IP database using multiple
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sources of data. This version of the server lasted until 2013, when
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it was once again rewritten from scratch, this time in Go. The database
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tool, however, remained intact.
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In 2013 the Go version was released as freegeoip 2.0 and this version
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had many iterations. The first versions of the server written in Go were
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very rustic, practically a verbatim transcription of the Python server.
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Took a while until it started looking more like common Go code, and to
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have tests.
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Another important change that shipped with v2 was a front-end based on
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AngularJS, but still mixed with some jQuery. The Google map in the front
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page was made optional to put more focus on the HTTP API. The popularity
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of freegeoip has increased considerably over the years of 2013 and 2014,
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calling for more.
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Enter freegeoip 3.0, an evolution of the Go server. The foundation of
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freegeoip, which is the IP database and HTTP API, now lives in a Go
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package that other developers can leverage. The freegeoip web server is
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built on this package making its code cleaner, the server faster,
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and requires zero maintenance for the IP database. The server downloads
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the file from MaxMind and keep it up to date in background.
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This and other changes make it very Docker friendly.
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The front-end has been trimmed down to a single index.html file that loads
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CSS and JS from CDNs on the internet. The JS part is based on AngularJS
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and handles the search request and response of the public site. The
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optional map has become a link to Google Maps following the lat/long
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of the query results.
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