Coupon-Finder

Coupon Finder Web App

This project is a small coupon finder web app with:

• a frontend/ folder for a clean search interface
• a backend/ Flask API for live public-page search

Users type a company or store name, and the app:

• searches public coupon-related sources
• fetches public result pages
• extracts likely discount codes with regex
• deduplicates repeated codes
• ranks codes higher when they appear stronger across sources
• shows compact result cards with expandable details

The app does not attempt checkout and does not brute-force codes.

Current Status

This version is now using live public-page search instead of mock-only data.

Important caveats:

• search engines and coupon sites can block or rate-limit requests
• some result pages may fail to load or redirect oddly
• coupon sites change their HTML often
• not every store will return results every time

The backend is built to handle these cases and return warnings when live sources are weak or blocked.

Project Structure

backend/
  app.py
  search_sources.py
  extract_codes.py
  rank_codes.py

frontend/
  index.html
  style.css
  script.js

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• internet connection for live search

Install dependencies:

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Run Locally

1. Start the Flask backend:

python backend/app.py

1. Open the frontend:

Open frontend/index.html in your browser.

The frontend expects the backend API at:

http://127.0.0.1:5000

API

GET /api/health

Simple health check.

Example:

http://127.0.0.1:5000/api/health

GET /api/search?store=<name>

Searches live public coupon-related pages for the given store.

Example:

http://127.0.0.1:5000/api/search?store=The%20IT%20Bay

Example response shape:

{
  "store": "The IT Bay",
  "warning_count": 1,
  "warnings": [
    "Direct coupon source fallback did not find any usable pages."
  ],
  "result_count": 2,
  "results": [
    {
      "code": "TRS3",
      "score": 16,
      "source_count": 2,
      "summary": "3% off",
      "sources": [
        {
          "title": "The IT Bay Coupon Codes",
          "url": "https://example.com/page",
          "context": "The IT Bay coupons. Get code TRS3 for 3% off any order..."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

UI Features

• centered search bar
• modern glassy result cards
• large bold code display
• short summary like 3% off
• source count on each card
• View details button for source titles, URLs, and context
• loading state
• no-results state
• warning-aware status messages
• responsive layout for desktop and mobile

Search Behavior

The backend currently:

• builds multiple store-name query variants
• searches Bing public results
• unwraps Bing tracking URLs to real destination URLs when possible
• fetches public HTML pages
• removes obvious blocked or non-HTML responses
• extracts likely coupon codes from snippets and page text
• ranks repeated codes above one-off matches

It also handles common user mistakes such as:

• extra spaces
• missing spaces
• typing TheITBay instead of The IT Bay
• searching with short brand variations

Known Limits

• live search quality depends on what public search engines return
• some stores only expose deals, not actual coupon codes
• some sources may mention expired or weak codes
• some search result pages may be blocked from automated requests

Example Store

During testing, live public pages for The IT Bay surfaced listings that mentioned codes such as:

• TRS3
• E100
• VE60

Those came from public coupon pages such as:

• icopyexpert.com
• pdfzilla.com
• dontpayfull.com

That does not guarantee a code still works at checkout, only that it appears on public source pages.

Deploy Direction

This structure is suitable for:

• frontend/ on GitHub Pages or any static host
• backend/ on Render or another Flask-compatible host

For deployment, you will usually want to:

1. host the Flask backend separately
2. set window.COUPON_API_BASE_URL in the frontend to your deployed API URL

Next Improvements

Good next steps would be:

1. add a backend debug endpoint to inspect raw fetched sources
2. improve regex extraction for more coupon-site formats
3. add tests for ranking and extraction
4. add deployment instructions for GitHub Pages and Render