Cloud Search

We were not able to completed our project.

Inspiration

A problem we've all encountered is the multiple types of cloud storage that people use and the difficulty to find where a specific document is. If you have a DropBox with thousands of photos, a iCloud with even more photos and a Google Drive, it may be difficult to find exactly what you're looking for. Our project inspiration was to search for a specific document by metadata, and Cloud Search will display where in the cloud that document is.

What it does

1. As a user, you are trying to find the document titled "Resume2017". You know its a Word Document but have no idea where it is stored. You do know its somewhere on your many cloud storage spaces.
2. In cloud search, type in the keyword of your document ("Resume") and since you know its a Word document, check off .doc as file extension.
3. Cloud Search looks through all of your cloud storage spaces and outputs where it is stored. (I.e. Google Drive) as well as a link.

How we built it

We were not able to build this project but below is the plan on how we wanted to accomplish it:

1. Acquire the DropBox and Google Drive APIs.
2. Create two fake accounts on DropBox and Google Drive with around 10 assorted documents each to make testing easier.
3. Using the APIs and write a script that accesses the metadata of the cloud storage spaces.
4. The script will sort and store in an SQL database the metadata.
5. Create a webpage with a search function and file type options, that looks through the database and returns the cloud system and a URL link to the file you are trying to access. Returns a error message if the search criteria does not match anything in the database.

Challenges we ran into

No one on our team was able to access wifi for about three hours. Coming into the hackathon we did not have a solid idea of what project to tackle and this made it difficult to sort out what projects would be feasible. Furthermore, as we are all from Canada none of us had a data phone plan to use. As a result we got a very late start to the hackathon.

The main issue when we started development was simply not enough experience with the framework we were trying to use. Furthermore, between our group members we only had a very rudimentary knowledge of SQL and javascript.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We came to Boston and tried something new! It was an amazing experience, and even though our project could be described as "failing miserably" it was still an incredible learning opportunity for all of us.

What we learned

When picking a project, pick something that requires skills you already have some experience in. Whoops we did not do that and it came back to bite us.

We did pick up some more Javascript and SQL skills which we're sure will come in handy!

What's next for Cloud Search

We do love this idea, and are hoping that when we get back to Calgary we can actually dedicate some more time to figuring this whole thing out.