Book a Book!

Inspiration

We wanted to create a usable and functional project. As avid book readers, and especially with summer vacation approaching, we are always looking for book recommendations.

What it does

The user inputs a book. We display information about the book (title, author, isbn, cover image) and we also display a recommendation (with information (title, author, isbn, cover image, description, GoodReads link)).

How we built it

The python code is connected to the GoodReads API, where we were able to get information like the title, author, ISBN, cover image, description, and the GoodReads link to any book in their database. They have a characteristic called simbooks, which is a list of books that is similar to the current book. Using html, CSS, javascript, and a python template, we were able to display information about the current book, and choose a book randomly from simbooks to present information about as well for the recommendation.

Challenges we ran into

The GoodReads API only allows a user to get information about one book per second. We initially wanted to provide three recommendations, not just one, but it was too challenging (for a beginner project) to properly get the information we needed from the API in a timely manner. Sometimes, even the one recommendation doesn't load, and the user has to refresh the page in order to get a recommendation.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As beginner hackers especially, we are very proud we were able to create a functional project. This is our first hackathon, and we've had a very fun experience by working to code Book a Book.

What we learned

Before this weekend, none of us knew how to use javascript, and more importantly, none of us had ever worked with an API. The mentors at this hackathon really helped us understand how to use both, and we are happy we were able to learn!

What's next for Book a Book!

We hope we win the Beginner Hack Category :)) and ideally, we would one day be able to provide the user with three recommendations instead of just one.