About the Project
Inspiration
As we were coming up with ideas for this year's hackathon, we were amazed by the HackTheNorth nametags. We both thought that it was awesome to use QR codes to connect people, and was a great metaphor for all the technology happening at HackTheNorth. We wanted to continue this, and connect even more people with intriguing technology. This is why created GitHub Rooms.
What it does
GitHub rooms is a tool that allows people to view and add to a repository of projects, which others have worked on in the same space. Anyone can create a room, providing them with a QR code that they can print out or display to anyone in the area. Then, anyone using the space will be able to scan it and upload what they have been working on. This is great for community spaces, where there is lots of varying development of tech, and it will enable people to connect with those in their community who share similar interests.
How we built it
We built this with a full stack system, using React and Django. It was made with a SQL database for keeping track of all of the users and projects integrated into our system, and Django to process requests from the frontend. React is the frontend, which is quite dynamic and creates simplicity in the code.
Challenges we ran into
We ran into a few challenges along the way, one of which was the time limitation. Obviously, that is a big consideration at an event like this, but we have so many more features that we want to add and just could not find the time. We also ran into technical challenges, specifically in accessing the API. GitHub has a great API, however it was a bit troublesome with API tokens and authenticating requests in the masses. We were able to overcome this after reading through quite a bit of documentation. The last challenge that we had was working collaboratively. Since we had Django running a server-like setup, as well as an SQL database, committing changes between us proved to be challenging. Often one of us had issues as the database was quite out of sync, which took some troubleshooting.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are very proud of the result, and believe that this is something that could be used in places like Communitech, where many people are sharing a space to work on cool tech! We hope to continue working on this in the future and add some more features, while probably also cleaning up some of the code.
What we learned
We learned a lot about both React and Django, as we both had limited experience, so it took a lot of googling. However, we were able to overcome these challenges and are much more comfortable using both of these platforms, and especially integrating them.
What's next for GitHub rooms
We want to continue to develop this and create something that can connect people in community spaces. We hope to add more features, such as commit tracking, profiles, and networking. In the meantime though, we are happy with what we created!
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