Query the XKCD API.

This is a learning project. The XKCD web comic provides a JSON API for requesting comic strips. This app, while being intentionally over-engineered, demonstrates some technologies I want to understand better, and serves as a showcase/reference for tools like FastAPI, rabbitMQ, minio, Redis, and more.

The main app consists of:

• An API (FastAPI)
• A SQLite database for storing comics, images, and metadata
• A rabbitMQ messaging service
• A Redis backend for rabbitMQ job results
  • I am sticking with Redis for now, despite their recent license change. I have not tested running Celery with a different key/value store.
  • I would like to eventually switch to Valkey
• A Celery app to handle background/async tasks with rabbitMQ and Redis

The API handles requests to the XKCD API, with a rate limit of 1 request per 5 seconds (to avoid sending a ton of requests to the wonderful Randall Monroe...he doesn't deserve that) when multiple comics are requested. In the case of multiple comic requests, requests are broken into "partitions" when >15 comics are requested at once, and the requests are run as background tasks with rabbitMQ; the results can be retrieved with the FastAPI app, which pulls the results from the Redis backend.

• Edit environment variables in ./containers/env_files

• From the project root, run python dockerctl.py

  • Because the docker-compose.yml and .env files are nested in ./containers, it's annoying having to prepend -f ./containers/docker-compose.[dev|prod].yml to ever command.
  • The dockerctl.py script uses the cross-platform subprocess module to run Docker commands on your behalf. Follow the prompts to control Docker operations

• Visit the API, rabbitMQ management console, or Redis commander using the following (assumes default ports, substitute your own if you change them):

This app uses Celery for background & scheduled tasks. Because the code is in a src/ directory, the celery -A ... command needs to be modified. To change the working directory of celery, use the --workdir=src/app_name param:

celery --workdir=src/auto_xkcd -A ...

• minio-py Github
• minio-py examples
• minio Python API client reference