Inspiration
As avid readers, we were inspired to create this project after finding it difficult to find information about specific books in one place. We wanted to create a platform where people can find information on any book in the world without having to search in many different places.
What it does
Book Finder allows users to search for any book and provides them with information on the book. It compiles all the information that a person would want to know about a book in one place! Additionally, it provides suggestions for other books that the user might be intending to search for, in case the exact match for the book cannot be found.
How we built it
We used html and css for the frontend, we also used javascript. For the backend we used python, flask, and google books as an API. We also tried to use Heroku for deployment.
Challenges we ran into
We struggled to deploy our project using Heroku after we finished it. Another challenge was finding an API with all of the information that we needed. One of the biggest challenges was having 1 member less than all of the other teams, because one of our teammates did not show up. Additionally, the most difficult challenge for us to overcome was having 3 team members who were all super new to Hackathons with little to no web development experience.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are super proud of how much we were able to learn in 12 hours! The time flew by super fast and we feel very accomplished to have been able to create our first ever project and dip our toes into web development. Additionally, we were able to learn about the differences between frontend and backend and use javascript, css, html, and APIs for the first time!
What we learned
We learned so much about computers and web development. It was our first time ever using javascript, html, css, and APIs and we were really glad that we had an awesome mentor to help us out! Also, we were able to learn about frontend and backend development, as well as the differences between both. In addition, we were able to learn so many different git/bash commands and how to use Heroku and Flask.
What's next for Find a Book
We have a lot of different ideas that we are going to implement soon after the Hackathon! One of the ideas that we would like to put into action is curating book recommendations for users based off of other books they have read and genres they would like to read.
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