Free Food UGA

We want to provide UGA students and faculty a simple way to find free food around campus. Our goal is to benefit the UGA community by promoting food giveaways and supporting local sustainability.

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Inspiration

 As a full-time college student with lots of studying to do, money can be hard to come by and anything free is always very much appreciated. When envisioning a project for this hackathon, we all agreed we wanted to build something that would help students in our local community. This led us to the idea of providing a medium for students to find free food on campus in a super fun and easy way. We want to give all students and faculty access to our website so that free food is easily accessible no matter their situation.

What it does

 After opening the website, the user will see markers across campus where people have indicated that there is free food. The comments above the markers will contain additional information regarding the precise location, quantity, and anything else which may be important. To add a location containing free food, the user will need to sign in using their google account. We included this in order to ensure that a single user does not spam the website with multiple markers. This feature is not yet implemented, however we are removing all markers every two hours as a placeholder while we continue to develop the feature.

How we built it

 We used Firebase to host the website and database. We constructed database tables in Firebase, and connected to them using JavaScript. The front end of the website was developed using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. We used the Google Maps API to display the map and add the markers, and we were able to implement a sign in page that enables the user to sign in with their google account using the Firebase documentation

Challenges we ran into

 Learning how to work with and combine new technologies was a big hurdle in the early stages of development. After seeing how each individual piece eventually came together, we will be able to implement our future projects much more quickly. 

 This experience was eye opening because of how much we were able to accomplish in such a short amount of time with limited experience. It is safe to say that we underestimated what we could accomplish together this weekend. We learned how to combine our strengths in the most efficient way possible in order to produce something beyond our skill sets at the start of the weekend.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

 We came into this hackathon with very little full stack web development experience and left with a published website, a working database, and an eye-catching user interface. As a result we have delivered a feasible way in which people can find free food on campus, and we gained invaluable experience throughout the process.

What we learned

 Coming into this project, we had very little experience in web development, cloud technologies, and managing databases, particularly NoSQL databases. We learned how to use backend technologies such as Node.js to act as a package manager for importing useful and functional code. We learned how to use Google Cloud APIs and create interactive code with them in Javascript. For example we added, removed, and customized the markers on the embedded Google Map courtesy of the Google Maps API. Also we learned how to leverage cloud technologies for fast and seamless transactions between databases.

In addition to immense technical experience, we learned about the effects our work can have on others. The free food GroupMe which inspired this website contains approximately 3700 people, resulting in lots of clutter and difficulty finding free food. Our website lets people access the information that they need in a much easier way. Additionally, we hope our project can help reduce food waste throughout our campus. Why throw away large quantities of food when you can add to a fun interactive website?

What's next for Free Food UGA

 There are still two significant features that we need to complete. One is the limits to adding markers. To accomplish this, we will need to be able to determine whether a user is logged in, and limit what they can do accordingly. We are also considering developing an IOS application to improve user experience and show our love and support for THE DAWGS!

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