Find and Dash

Find and Dine deliver a search engine website service to find your favorite food at any award-winning UMass dining common today!

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Inspiration

UMass has been holding the title of #1 dining for over 5 years now, to no one's surprise, as the quality, quantity, diversity, and efficiency that the dining commons deliver are superb and surpass every other university's dining experience in America. However, with so many options, a large walking distance between dining commons, and a tendency for the best food to run out, students find themselves disappointed to never find their favorite food to eat, even though it is usually available somewhere around campus. I strived to fix this problem

What it does

I created a website that provides a state-of-the-art search engine service that finds your favorite foods across all 4 Dining Commons so you can find the food you are craving without having to aimlessly walk across campus for food.

How we built it

The backend was mainly built through Java, Spring, Maven, and Tomcat to create the website service and write the APIs in an MVC and REST format. The backend also makes HTTP requests to various UMass dining information databases through DHCP to extract JSON files and information. Front-end was made entirely through HTML. The website is secured and hosted through an ElasticBeanstalk environment and is built and deployed through a CodePipeline and CodeBuild.

Challenges we ran into

As a solo developer, it was challenging to manage all the different tasks that needed to be done, and have everything done perfectly on time. Not having an outside perspective meant I had to do all the research by myself and struggle through bugs alone. Nevertheless, I was able to overcome any difficulties and create the website.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am very knowledgeable about the backend process, however, the front end was entirely new to me, and I am very proud that I was able to create a functioning and pleasing UI.

What we learned

I learned how to properly communicate through Java and HTML to create an amazing user experience. I also learned how to self-manage my own software project by creating my own deadlines and managing all the tasks that need to be done.

What's next for Find and Dash

Next would be not only to integrate into the main UMass dining website, but to also create more services such as a weekly meal planner, or maybe go further and implement something similar to MyFitnessPal.

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