Inspiration
During quarantine, it has been difficult to meet new people. In particular, looking for housing and suitable roommates can be difficult if most of the people around you are not living near campus, or if you can't meet people who have things in common with you to room with. We wanted to create an easier way for UW students to find personalized housing, especially with the lack of socialization throughout quarantine.
What it does
UW Housing Hub allows users to add listings for their housing. They can not only post information about the place they are staying, but also share personal information about the current residents, including major, sleep schedule, and habits. Then, users who are looking for housing and roommates can browse based on certain preferences so they can get matched with the best listing possible.
How I built it
We used Python Flask to build an API that can add listings and roommate data and query listings from the database. We stored our listings data on Firebase, and stored images of the listing and roommates on the server. We then wrote a frontend in React that provided an interface for invoking the API. Finally, we deployed our webapp onto Google Cloud.
Challenges I ran into
It took a while to set up Google Cloud, especially getting the Flask backend and React frontend to run as one server. Additionally, it took some struggling to get the backend connected with Firebase.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
We developed a nice UI design despite none of us having experience with UX, and the backend made the retrieval of data much easier. The setup took a lot of time, but getting everything up and running after struggling was very satisfying.
What I learned
This was the first time any of us built a full-stack web application, and we learned how all the parts of a webapp with the server, cloud, and frontend come together to make something that is easy for users.
What's next for housing-roommate-finder
We are adding some finishing touches to connect the frontend with the backend. We hope that in the future we can add a messaging system so future roommates can get to know each other even better, and a map to show the addresses of room locations.
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