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