Inspiration
We were inspired by the Health category in HooHacks, particularly the suggestion of building an app that promotes better mental health.
What it does
Journal Buddy allows you to make daily journal entries where you discuss your day. Additionally, you have the ability to rate each day on a scale of 1 to 5. These journal entries are then visible on the "My Journals" page. Users are restricted to one entry per day, but they are able to edit their entry later in the day. The main feature of our site is that you can request to receive a "pick me up," and be randomly shown one of your good days. Additionally, we query a motivational quotes API to randomly give users motivational quotes. The login feature ensures that users can only see their own journal entries. Journal Buddy aims to give users a space to write down their thoughts while also providing personalized motivation and helping them track their previous moods and experiences.
How we built it
We used Django, PostgreSQL, and Heroku.
Challenges we ran into
We encountered some issues with consistent pycache files, as we couldn't figure out how to properly add .pyc files to .gitignore (despite literally adding *.pyc to our .gitignore).
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are very proud of hitting our core deliverables. We knew that getting the random good day feature to work would be critical, and we're proud to say that we hit that milestone ahead of schedule. We were able to make the website more personal and unique by displaying a randomly generated quote (pulled from ZenQuotes API) each time the user visits the home page. We also allow the users to see all past journal entries and display a randomly chosen "good" journal entry from their past if they view the motivation page.
What we learned
We learned that we should prioritize the styling of the site a lot earlier in the development process, so that we have a consistent view of what the UI of the site should look like before we start making our complex Django HTML files.
What's next for Journal Buddy
We want to add the ability to upload an image, alongside text, for each journal entry. We would also like to implement a feature where you can mute past journal entries so that they do not appear in the motivation tab.
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