30 Days of Code - Day 1 - Random Quote Generator
Tags: webdev, javascript, programming, news
Published: 2022-08-16 08:28:00

Hi, my name is Cliff. I'm a senior software engineer with over 4 years of professional development experience building cutting-edge web/mobile applications. 

I'm starting a new coding challenge for 30 days. I plan on developing a small app each day using a wide range of technologies including JavaScript, Python, HTML, CSS and hopefully many more. 

In making this post I hope that others can see my journey and  potentially learn something or comment if they have any improvements!! I'll be documenting the entire process here on dev.to, so I hope you all will follow along with me,


So, lets jump right into the app!

Firstly, I'll start the challenge by creating a random quote web app. My plan with this project is to keep things simple and only use vanilla JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. 

Here's a couple of requirements that I would like from this app:

1. The background and main color theme of the app will change to another random color on page refresh.

2. In the center of the page, the user should see a component with a quote, author, and links to share the quote via twitter/tumbler.

3. The component must contain a button to get a new quote if the user presses it.

So jumping right in, I'm going to first focus on setting a random background/theme color for the app.

I've created a JavaScript filed name `script.js`, which I will use to write the scripts to generate a random color.

We can generate a random color a few lines of code. Right now to keep it simple, we will choose a random color between 3 different colors stored in a list.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/jx8cxjg8zx9u2fchs1x5.png)

Then, create a function that will use the document object to change the background and theme color to the random color selected.

script.js:


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/c517owepl7xd0z59cjl3.png)

This will be our script.js file. Now we can create a basic html and css markup.

index.html

```
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>

    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <title>Random Quote</title>
</head>
<body>

<div id="wrapper">
        <div class="box">
            <div id="content" class="box_content">
                Hello
            </div>

        </div>
        <div class="footer">by <a href="https://github.com/BlueBoi904">BlueBoi904</a>
    </div>
</div>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">
<script src="script.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
```
styles.css:

```
.box {
    display: flex;
    align-items: center;
    justify-content: center;
    background-color: antiquewhite;
}
.box_content {

}

body {
    background-color: #333;
    color: #333;
    font-family:sans-serif;
    font-weight: 400;
    display: flex;
    justify-content: center;
    align-items: center;
    height: 100vh;
}
```

Now whenever we visit the page, the page and text will be a random color.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/bvann03hxebzhpj3jtrh.png)


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/cqz67x7xyg17e75fsct6.png)

So now that we have requirement #1 satisfied, lets move on to the second!

Javascript:

```
const projectName = 'random-quote-machine';
let quotesData;

var colors = [
  '#16a085',
  '#27ae60',
  '#2c3e50',
  '#f39c12',
  '#e74c3c',
  '#9b59b6',
  '#FB6964',
  '#342224',
  '#472E32',
  '#BDBB99',
  '#77B1A9',
  '#73A857'
];
var currentQuote = '',
  currentAuthor = '';

function getQuotes() {
  return $.ajax({
    headers: {
      Accept: 'application/json'
    },
    url:
      'https://gist.githubusercontent.com/camperbot/5a022b72e96c4c9585c32bf6a75f62d9/raw/e3c6895ce42069f0ee7e991229064f167fe8ccdc/quotes.json',
    success: function (jsonQuotes) {
      if (typeof jsonQuotes === 'string') {
        quotesData = JSON.parse(jsonQuotes);
        console.log('quotesData');
        console.log(quotesData);
      }
    }
  });
}

function getRandomQuote() {
  return quotesData.quotes[
    Math.floor(Math.random() * quotesData.quotes.length)
  ];
}

function getQuote() {
  let randomQuote = getRandomQuote();

  currentQuote = randomQuote.quote;
  currentAuthor = randomQuote.author;

  $('#tweet-quote').attr(
    'href',
    'https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?hashtags=quotes&related=freecodecamp&text=' +
      encodeURIComponent('"' + currentQuote + '" ' + currentAuthor)
  );

  $('#tumblr-quote').attr(
    'href',
    'https://www.tumblr.com/widgets/share/tool?posttype=quote&tags=quotes,freecodecamp&caption=' +
      encodeURIComponent(currentAuthor) +
      '&content=' +
      encodeURIComponent(currentQuote) +
      '&canonicalUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tumblr.com%2Fbuttons&shareSource=tumblr_share_button'
  );

  $('.quote-text').animate({ opacity: 0 }, 500, function () {
    $(this).animate({ opacity: 1 }, 500);
    $('#text').text(randomQuote.quote);
  });

  $('.quote-author').animate({ opacity: 0 }, 500, function () {
    $(this).animate({ opacity: 1 }, 500);
    $('#author').html(randomQuote.author);
  });

  var color = Math.floor(Math.random() * colors.length);
  $('html body').animate(
    {
      backgroundColor: colors[color],
      color: colors[color]
    },
    1000
  );
  $('.button').animate(
    {
      backgroundColor: colors[color]
    },
    1000
  );
}

$(document).ready(function () {
  getQuotes().then(() => {
    getQuote();
  });

  $('#new-quote').on('click', getQuote);
});

```
HTML:

```
<link
  rel="stylesheet"
  href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.3.0/css/font-awesome.min.css"
/>
<div id="wrapper">
  <div id="quote-box">
    <div class="quote-text">
      <i class="fa fa-quote-left"> </i><span id="text"></span>
    </div>
    <div class="quote-author">- <span id="author"></span></div>
    <div class="buttons">
      <a
        class="button"
        id="tweet-quote"
        title="Tweet this quote!"
        target="_top"
      >
        <i class="fa fa-twitter"></i>
      </a>
      <a
        class="button"
        id="tumblr-quote"
        title="Post this quote on tumblr!"
        target="_blank"
      >
        <i class="fa fa-tumblr"></i>
      </a>
      <button class="button" id="new-quote">New quote</button>
    </div>
  </div>
  <div class="footer">by <a href="https://codepen.io/BlueBoi904/">BlueBoi904</a></div>
</div>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.1.0/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.12.0/jquery-ui.min.js"></script>

```

SCSS:

```
@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Raleway:400,500');
* {
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
  list-style: none;
  vertical-align: baseline;
}

div {
  position: relative;
  z-index: 2;
}

body {
  background-color: #333;
  color: #333;
  font-family: 'Raleway', sans-serif;
  font-weight: 400;
  display: flex;
  justify-content: center;
  align-items: center;
  height: 100vh;
}
.footer {
  width: 450px;
  text-align: center;
  display: block;
  margin: 15px auto 30px auto;
  font-size: 0.8em;
  color: #fff;
  a {
    font-weight: 500;
    text-decoration: none;
    color: #fff;
  }
}
#quote-box {
  border-radius: 3px;
  position: relative;
  //margin:8% auto auto auto;
  width: 450px;
  padding: 40px 50px;
  display: table;
  background-color: #fff;
  .quote-text {
    i {
      font-size: 1em;
      margin-right: 0.4em;
    }
    text-align: center;
    width: 450px;
    height: auto;
    clear: both;
    font-weight: 500;
    font-size: 1.75em;
  }
  .quote-author {
    width: 450px;
    height: auto;
    clear: both;
    padding-top: 20px;
    font-size: 1em;
    text-align: right;
  }
  .buttons {
    width: 450px;
    margin: auto;
    display: block;
    .button {
      height: 38px;
      border: none;
      border-radius: 3px;
      color: #fff;
      background-color: #333;
      outline: none;
      font-size: 0.85em;
      padding: 8px 18px 6px 18px;
      margin-top: 30px;
      opacity: 1;
      cursor: pointer;
      &:hover {
        opacity: 0.9;
      }
      &#tweet-quote,
      &#tumblr-quote {
        float: left;
        padding: 0px;
        padding-top: 8px;
        text-align: center;
        font-size: 1.2em;
        margin-right: 5px;
        height: 30px;
        width: 40px;
      }
      &#new-quote {
        float: right;
      }
    }
  }
}

```



Thanks for reading along, please check in for the next progress update!

Cliff