Noded

A broad look at Noded's interface. Shows an example of the built-in database node.
Here, some more examples of notes in this application, as well as the uploaded file stores, and built-in code editor.
Here, we can see the menu of the various nodes available in Noded. Most of these can be triggered through normal typing.
An example of more text-based notes in Noded. Noded supports various headers and markdown-style field types.
Dark mode view of the dashboard

Inspiration

This app was inspired by a similarly flexible note-taking application that happens to be proprietary software owned by a for-profit business. Inspired by the flexibility and new workflows this software enabled, we set out to push the capabilities by building it ourselves.

What it does

Noded is a tree-style note-taking app. However, it provides much more dynamic and advanced features than your average Markdown editor. Aside from the standard paragraphs and headings, Noded provides several extra nodes (heh) with advanced functionality such as a database, syntax-highlighted code editor, and file uploader.

Noded is designed to organize and keep track of the things you care about.

How I built it

Myself and my two partners (QiTao Weng & Thomas Atkins) built Noded on a split platform. The front end is built in TypeScript on the Ionic 4 platform. The backend is built on an MVC style Node.js framework called Flitter. We pushed ourselves to learn new technologies by deploying and managing the release cycle of our app with Azure DevOps.

Challenges I ran into

We faced several challenges while developing Noded. One notable challenge was working with new frameworks and platforms. The other was just the sheer scope and challenge of such an ambitious project.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Not only does the basic editor work, but we had time to not only implement several advanced editors but also improve the overall look-and-feel of the app, as well as implement a system for JSON and HTML exports of user's notes.

What I learned

We learned that, while it can be time-consuming in the start, having a good build/release pipeline can be very valuable for diagnosing and planning teamwork. Additionally, I learned how to work with more advanced features of Angular and other structures while building the front-end text editor.

What's next for Noded

We intend to continue using Noded after the competition! We have plans to improve its capabilities to include more finely grained options for formatting, as well as expanded advanced features like Math notation.

Built With

Submitted to

HackKU 2020

Created by

I worked on the pipeline to automatically check the code we wrote I also worked on the design and them of the app. I also helped with fixing bugs in the rest of the code.

Thomas N Atkins
I worked on building the API resource for connecting the front- and back-ends, as well as some of the more advanced front-end features.

Garrett Mills
My first task was to learn how to use the Flitter framework and set up user authentication through a local auth service and Oauth services. I then moved on to the design and layout of the login pages and began building those. I was then tasked with creating the function to export the database items into different file formats. This was a huge learning experience for me as I was completely unfamiliar with the technologies we used.

QiTao Weng