BallersOnly

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The Problem

The Covid-19 pandemic has been difficult for everyone. One major issue a lot of people are facing is staying in shape. Our team really loves basketball, so we decided to create a tool to help other fans of the game unite together once it is safe to do so.

The Solution

Meet BallersOnly. BallersOnly is a tool for basketball fans to find other people to play a game of pickup basketball with. Often times we have an itch to play basketball, but we don't have enough people to play with. This tool is designed to link you with other people in your situation and help you organize a pickup basketball game.

Features

Looking for players system * Quickly post a new listing * Sort by last updated, distance and # of players required * Accept matches and easily contact your fellow player * Distance calculation based on your distance to the basketball court using GOOGLE MAPS API

How we built it

We started off by using the MERN stack to get a quick start on our application. Next we split up into 2 teams. One team focused on initializing the frontend while the other focused on the backend. Eventually we were at a stage where we could link the two together. Next we focused on populating the frontend with everything we would need, such as a modal form to take input for listings, a navigation bar to navigate the site and etc. Once that was done we created our main listings page where all of the pickup listings would be viewable. Lastly we spent time working on various design aspects of the site and touching it up to make it an extraordinary experience for our beloved users..

Challenges we ran into

This was our first time working with ReactJS which proved to be quite the experience. Additionally it was our first time truly collaborating on a project together so we made sure to effectively use git for version control as well as layout a design plan before we started. Lastly we all had to come together and learn how to use MongoDB as our database system. We haven't worked with MongoDB before but it proved to be simple and intuitive once we were situated. We also had challenges working with the Routing system of MERN as express took a little while to get used to.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Learning new things such as React, Mongodb, Express, and last but not least Node.js. The MERN stack is definitely not easy to ramp up to but it is quite forgiving once you understand how to use the framework.

What we learned

This was the first hackathon for majority of us, so it was a great experience being able to collaborate on a project together. We learned a lot about the backend and frontend of an application and how they can interact with each other as well as what it's like to build a system from the ground up.