Docs / Quotes Data API / Endpoints / Quote of the day

Quote of the day

Deterministic for a given UTC date and filter set: the same request returns the same quotation all day, so it is safe to cache and every one of your users sees the same line. There is no stored pick and no midnight job -- the date seeds the ordering, so two servers answering on the same day agree without talking to each other.

GET https://api.softon.dev/v1/quotes/random Copy

Query parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
`date`	date	ISO-8601 date in UTC. The same date and filters always return the same quotation, so it is safe to cache for the day. Defaults to today.
`category`	string	Restrict the pool to one category.

Request

curl https://api.softon.dev/v1/quotes/random \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SOFTON_KEY"

req, _ := http.NewRequestWithContext(ctx, "GET",
    "https://api.softon.dev/v1/quotes/random", nil)
req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("SOFTON_KEY"))

res, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
if err != nil { log.Fatal(err) }
defer res.Body.Close()

var page struct {
    Data Random `json:"data"`
    Meta struct{ Next *string `json:"next"` } `json:"meta"`
}
if err := json.NewDecoder(res.Body).Decode(&page); err != nil { log.Fatal(err) }

import json, os, urllib.parse, urllib.request

url = "https://api.softon.dev/v1/quotes/random"
req = urllib.request.Request(url, headers={
    "Authorization": "Bearer " + os.environ["SOFTON_KEY"],
})
page = json.load(urllib.request.urlopen(req))
# page["data"] is the object; page["error"] is None on success

const url = new URL("https://api.softon.dev/v1/quotes/random");

const res = await fetch(url, {
  headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.SOFTON_KEY}` },
});
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`${res.status} ${await res.text()}`);
const { data, meta } = await res.json();

Response

The envelope is identical on every softon.dev API: data, meta, error. Only the shape inside data changes per dataset — see the response envelope.

{
  "data": {
    "id": "birjob:1981",
    "source": "birjob",
    "text": "Believe in your infinite potential.",
    "author": "Roy T. Bennett",
    "category": "Believe In Yourself",
    "origin": "passiton",
    "ingested_at": "2026-08-06T07:29:46.646799Z"
  },
  "meta": { "request_id": "req_9Fv3" },
  "error": null
}

Fields of `data`

Field	Type	Description
`id`	string	Stable identifier, "<source>:<source id>".
`source`	string	Which scraper delivered this quotation.
`text`	string	The quotation.
`author`	string · nullable	Attributed author. null where the collection does not name one.
`category`	string · nullable	The upstream's own label. A folksonomy, not an enum -- tens of thousands of distinct values -- so treat it as a tag rather than a fixed set.
`origin`	string · nullable	Where the quotation was collected from, e.g. "passiton". Distinct from source, which is the scraper that delivered it.
`ingested_at`	timestamp	When this version was stored.

Try it

Send the request to see a response.