eduConnect

Find nearby students and connect with them through Instagram and Instagram based on their major, classes, and bio.

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Inspiration

Wanted another outlet to make friends/connections outside of the people you meet in class.

What it does

Finds nearby students on the eduConnect network and displays their major, bio, and current classes, and allows you to connect with them on Instagram and LinkedIn.

How we built it

We built this web app on our AWS server with the Cloud9 IDE. We used JavaScript and PHP for the following processes:

Getting nearby users Getting user data Updating user location Updating user data Erasing user location

The central idea of the app was to send the current location every 10 seconds while also checking for new users on the network (within a 0.05-mile radius) to display.

Sending the location is accomplished by getting the latitude and longitude using the browser geolocation and sending it to the PHP script to update the columns in the database.

Getting nearby users was accomplished by getting the user's current location and iterating through the database in PHP checking for users within a 0.05-mile radius using a distance function.

Challenges we ran into

Some challenges we ran into were:

  • Since we were refreshing the data every 10 seconds, if you were viewing the data (expanding the accordion), it would close the accordion because it was refreshing the HTML every 10 seconds after gathering the new data. In order to prevent this, we added a toggle function that would prevent the data check refresh and as soon as you closed it, you would get the new data (perhaps a new user appeared on the network), and the automatic refreshing would resume.

  • Utilizing the geolocation API. With the new versions of Chrome, geolocation is not allowed on unsecured sites (HTTP://). Since we built it on my server, I didn't have a security certificate so we had to find a way to treat my site as though it was secure by adding a flag in the Chrome settings (pretty quick fix).

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating a real network that allows you to see users in real-time based on location and whether they are online.

What we learned

We learned how to use the browser geolocation API (for Chrome, Safari, Firefox)

What's next for eduConnect

eduConnect could be enhanced by allowing direct messaging through the app as well as having the ability to add friends directly on the app to separate it from your other social apps such as Instagram. Along with this eduConnect could add more social links such as Snapchat, Discord, etc.

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