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Home Page
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Map Page
Inspiration
We noticed that existing food bank websites only display food banks that belong to their particular organization. This makes it difficult for people to weigh their options by having to search through multiple sites. With this is mind, we wanted to create a way to streamline the discovery system and facilitate communication between local food banks and users.
What it does
Nutrihub is a multi-featured website that displays a map centered around the user's location with markers indicating the locations of nearby food banks. Furthermore, these food bank locations are displayed below with their websites so users can obtain more information. In addition to this feature, there is an option for the user to request what they need from or donate money to a food bank registered with Nutrihub. Through an automated email process, food banks will be contacted about such requests and will establish a direct line of communication to the user being requested.
How we built it
Nutrihub was built using the Django framework and Python, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, and Javascript. It also uses the Google Maps API to display the map and incorporate nearby search to identify nearby food banks. The Twilio API was also used to send email notifications to registered food banks to notify them of user requests. Github was used to collaborate and combine efforts into one project.
Challenges we ran into
One of the major challenges we ran into was utilizing the APIs. It was difficult to optimize the speed of the Google Maps API response and with one query it did not return all the information we wanted. As such we had to make secondary queries to obtain the food bank website information. In general, we were not as experienced with Javascript and had to learn how to write the scripts in our HTML files to retrieve the data. As for the Twilio API, we accidentally publicized the private key and subsequently had the Twilio account suspended twice.
We also ran into challenges while attempting to deploy our website. The Heroku sign up page was down so we could not make a new account to deploy and DigitalOcean contained innumerable errors that we could not find online to fix.
Finally, Github was very slow making it very difficult and buggy to merge different people's work into the main branch.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of creating a website that incorporates multiple APIs into one cohesive product. We are also proud of our effort in styling the pages using Bootstrap and CSS so the user interface is more pleasant to use and look at. Overall, we are proud of improving from last year's experience at HooHacks 2022.
What we learned
This is the first time we have endeavored in using APIs in a website. We also learned more about Bootstrap and CSS and how to apply them in a website.
What's next for Nutrihub
Nutrihub will start partnerships with food banks in order to get them registered so that users can properly receive information and contact them accordingly. We would also deploy it to a hosting platform like Heroku and move our database to the cloud using a platform like PostgreSQL so that anyone can access the website from their own device and find information or donate to our cause. Finally, we would endeavor on a marketing campaign to spread awareness so that users can find the help they need through our system.
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