Inspiration
As of writing, there have been 94 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide. Many of these cases come from public places, such as grocery stores, banks, or other businesses, where water droplets can be easily transmitted through the air or onto public surfaces. Although the government has mandated precautions such as mandatory masks and social distancing, businesses provide varying levels of safety — both on the onus of business enforcement and customer compliance of these guidelines. I’m sure we’ve all experienced the anxiety that comes with being near someone wearing their mask wrong or entering your 2-metre bubble. For many citizens, it is difficult to perform daily routine tasks without a concern of lenient measures occurring in areas they frequent. Our COVID-19 Reviews extension was created to give customers specific information about businesses while still being closely integrated with apps they often use for navigation (Google Maps).
What it does
COVID-19 Reviews is a Chrome extension that augments the Google Maps platform by adding a new set of ratings related to pandemic guidelines for businesses. The extension shows the aggregated average rating of any given business across various criteria (eg. customers/employees observing social distancing, adherence to maximum occupancy guidelines, etc.) and allows users to submit their own review. Customers will give higher ratings to stores that follow these precautions, which will in turn attract other customers to choose this store over one with less strict enforcement of health safety protocol.
How I built it
The backend consists of a Google Cloud Compute virtual machine running Node.js as a server with a CockroachDB database. The Node.js server acts as an API, with multiple endpoints for pulling and submitting reviews. The Chrome extension is a React app injected directly into the DOM.
Challenges I ran into
Working with CockroachDB was a challenge in that it was a software that we did not have experience before and was unlike the graphically oriented database managers our team members had used before. However, the software was well documented and the Cockroach Labs members being friendly and helpful greatly assisted with learning how to set up the database on a remote machine. Form submission data and handling requests to and from the database was a challenge. We originally wanted to inject the extension directly into the HTML of Google Maps but our integrated React app was our fix.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
None of us have made a Chrome extension before and this is the first hackathon for half of our team members!
What I learned
Lots of Javascript. Like, a lot. Also command line database management.
What's next for COVID-19 Reviews
There is potential for many more features, such as text comments from users, displaying individual reviews, and incorporating time of visit!
Built With
- chrome
- cockroachdb
- css
- extension
- google-cloud
- google-maps
- html
- javascript
- maps
- postman
- react
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