MeetMyFriends powered by SkyScanner

MeetMyFriends (powered by SkyScanner)

We were motivated by real life needs. We all have friends abroad and meeting up can be rather difficult. We wanted a cheap and easy way to find flights from different locations to a common (but unknown) location. The results of this query to the SkyScanner API are a location, to which we all could travel the cheapest.

The other use case was the wish to be able to catch the same connection flights as your friends when travelling from different locations to a common (known) location. In this query the user and his friends receive the cheapest flights with common connection flights (multi-stop flights only) for everyone while making sure at least one part of the travel is done together.

Our results are displayed on a website akin to SkyScanner itself, taking an input of Name, Locations (with autocomplete) and Dates.

How we built it

We built the application in C# with ASP.NET Core, JQuery. We modified and used an open source C# Wrapper and of course the SkyScanner API.

Challenges we ran into

The wrapper itself was a challenge. Just understanding and then extending it to be usable for our required queries. The lack of room ventilation did not help. Most of us haven't had much C# programming experience, but it was a good learning opportunity.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

It runs rather smoothly on multi-cored systems with the main request loop running in parallel. We think people will actually use our product. (at least until the api key expires :D ).