A modern, robust quote archive application built with Flask. Designed originally for archiving IRC (Internet Relay Chat) logs, it serves as a general-purpose text quote repository with community submission, voting, and moderation features.

• Quote Management

  • Public submission interface with preview functionality.
  • IP-based rate limiting to prevent spam (60-second cooldown).
  • Legacy date support and automatic timestamping for new submissions.
  • "Copy to Clipboard" functionality for easy sharing.

• Moderation System

  • Secure Admin Panel (/modapp) protected by Argon2 authentication.
  • Workflow: Quotes submit as "Pending" -> Admin approves/rejects.
  • Bulk moderation actions.
  • Flagging system for user-reported content.

• Voting & Interaction

  • Upvote/Downvote system.
  • Database-backed IP tracking to ensure 1 vote per IP per quote.
  • Cookie-less architecture for better privacy and voting integrity.

• User Interface

  • Responsive, clean design.
  • Dark Mode / Light Mode toggle (persists via local storage).
  • Search functionality (Web and API).
  • Random quote generator.

• security

  • CSRF Protection (WTF-CSRF).
  • Secure Headers (CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options) configurable via JSON.
  • SQL Injection protection via SQLAlchemy ORM.
  • Input sanitization.

• Python 3.8+
• SQLite (included)

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/ircquotes.git
   cd ircquotes

2. Set up a virtual environment:

   python3 -m venv .venv
   source .venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate

3. Install dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Initialize the application secrets: Create a secret key file in the instance folder.

   mkdir -p instance
   echo "your-super-secret-random-string" > instance/flask_secret_key

5. Initialize the database: Run the setup script to create the SQLite database and tables.

   python create_fresh_db.py

   Note: This will ask for confirmation before overwriting an existing database.

The application is fully configurable via config.json. You can adjust:

• Database settings (pool size, timeouts).
• Security headers and CSRF settings.
• App behavior (Quotes per page, max length, auto-approve toggle).
• Logging levels.

For a detailed explanation of every setting, see CONFIG_GUIDE.md.

The default admin user is configured in config.json. To generate a new password hash for the config file, use the utility script:

python generate_password.py
# Enter password when prompted, then copy the hash to config.json

For local development with debug mode enabled:

python app.py

Access the app at http://127.0.0.1:6969.

For production environments, use the included Gunicorn wrapper or a WSGI server of your choice.

python production.py

Or directly with Gunicorn:

gunicorn -c production.py app:app

See DEPLOYMENT.md for detailed Nginx and Systemd configuration examples.

The project includes a comprehensive test suite using pytest.

pytest

Note: The tests use a file-swapping mechanism to safely backup your production database while running tests against a temporary one.

The codebase has undergone a significant modernization and security audit. Key changes include:

• Seeded Database: The repository now ships with a populated instance/quotes.db as the default dataset.
• Bash.org Importer: Added import_bash_folder.py to bulk-import legacy bash.org text dumps.

• Argon2 Hashing: Replaced legacy password handling with Argon2 for robust admin authentication.
• Rate Limiting: Implemented a 60-second cooldown per IP on the submission endpoint to prevent spam flooding.
• Proxy Integrity: Added ProxyFix middleware to correctly resolve user IPs behind Cloudflare/Nginx, ensuring voting and rate-limiting integrity.
• Search Protection: Capped web search results to 50 items to prevent Denial of Service (DoS) via broad queries.
• Safe Admin Scripts: Added confirmation prompts to database reset scripts to prevent accidental data loss.

• Multiple Admins: config.json now supports multiple admin accounts for shared moderation.
• Unified Config Loader: Centralized configuration access with typed helpers.

• Vote Integrity: Migrated from cookie-based voting to a database-backed Vote model (1 vote per IP per quote).
• Concurrent SQLite: Configured SQLite with WAL mode and NullPool to handle concurrent connections and prevent locking errors.
• Flask 3.x Compatibility: Updated all routes and contexts to support Flask 3.0+ and Werkzeug 3.0 standards.

• Test Suite: Added a complete integration test suite (pytest) with safe database isolation.
• Dependency Management: Updated requirements.txt with modern package versions.

The application exposes a JSON API for third-party integrations.

• GET /api/quotes - List quotes (paginated)
• GET /api/quotes/<id> - Get specific quote
• GET /api/random - Get a random quote
• GET /api/search?q=term - Search quotes
• GET /api/stats - Database statistics

See LICENSE file for details.