Inspiration
Our inspiration for Hidden Valentine came from our desire to make something cute and meaningful. We thought that Valentine's Day was the perfect theme for it. It also allowed us to experiment with APIs, namely the Twil.io API.
What it does
Hidden Valentine is a website that prompts users to input a recipient phone number and message. It sends the message to the recipient using an anonymous phone number, allowing users to convey their feelings without revealing their identity.
How we built it
We built the front-end using HTML and CSS, and the back-end using Python Flask with Twil.io API.
Challenges we ran into
Some challenges that we ran into include difficulty with getting information from front-end and using it in the backend Python files. We had to learn almost everything from scratch as all of us had little to no coding experience for what we were trying to do. The biggest head-scratchers were learning how to grab the data from the front-end into the back-end, haggling WTForms/Jinja2 to accept HTML and CSS code, and implementing proper error checks and form validations.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud that we challenged ourselves; some of us didn't have any prior HTML or CSS experience and none of us had any back-end experience. However, we were able to teach ourselves as much as we can by reading documentation. We used CSS to customize as many aspects of the website as much as we could while still fitting the simple aesthetic. Some of us used APIs for the very first time, and were able to connect front-end with back-end. The Twil.io demonstration showed how to initiate a hard-coded message to a hard-coded phone number, but we were able to take variable phone numbers and messages from user input and send it to the recipients phone. It was a full-stack experience all in about 24 hours.
What we learned
We learned how to implement APIs, work together as a team, split up tasks effectively, communicate obstacles, and version control using Git from the VS code terminal. We also attended workshops for HTML and CSS and building our own APIs. As aforementioned, it was our first time building a website and implementing back-end functions into it. There were a surprising amount of details we had to consider such as hiding APIs, security issues, and learning how to bring all types of programming languages together to execute a program.
What's next for Hidden Valentine
Content moderation as we are aware that such a service can be abused if not restricted. We would make sure that words which indicate offensive, harmful, or hateful intent or effect would be removed. Our website is meant for spreading positivity, and content moderation will help us achieve that. There are also aspects of the project that can still be improved on, but we'll definitely remember our experience in the past three days and have all gained a lot from this Hackathon!
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