#107: FoodFindr

Inspiration

Seeing crazy inflation and devastating world conflict firsthand, we were inspired to create an application that would spread varied information, especially for topics regarding food, an absolute necessity. We hope to promote diversity by recognizing cultural dietary restrictions, as well as helping the general population budget themselves to protect from inflation.

What it does

Our program begins with creating a personal account. Once created, the website guides the user to a custom search engine, where the user can input any food and receive a related recipe. Additionally, the user can filter through dietary restrictions, for example, to further personalize the recipes they receive. This promotes variety and diversity. The user can choose to favorite recipes; they will show up in the profile and be saved into the account, so the recipe can be easily accessed, even from different computers.

How we built it

We began with a Github repository as the skeleton of the website, and began building from there. Some of us chose to lay the foundation for the HTML, and the others went directly to implementing the API into javascript. After the multiple webpages were stable and running consistently, we moved on to filters and linking a database. The database not only stores the user's account but also their favorited recipes.

Challenges we ran into

The API was extremely difficult to use because it had strict regulations on the number of requests. In order to test all possible bugs, we used over ten unique API keys. Also, we struggled with getting a domain, FoodFindr.tech, but it never connected to the repository, and we were forced to give it up. Additionally, this was the first time we worked with javascript and HTML frameworks such as bootstrap. The CSS was difficult as well.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The search and filter functions work flawlessly, and the modals give a visual representation of the recipe. Given that we spent a majority of our time working on the modal, we were extremely relieved to see them working better than we imagined. Creating the favoritism mechanism was challenging, but we were ultimately successful as data pushed to the database and was pulled successfully.

What we learned

We learned many new functions in CSS to better format. We also learned many of the javascript basics and bootstrap basics. This was also our first time using Github to create such a large project, and we learned how communication, physically and virtually, works with programming.

What's next for FoodFindr

We will use a higher access of the API to prevent key blocking. We also plan on using some level of AI to suggest recipes based on the user's favorites, and to polish up the website designs.