Pawsitive Match

cat page
filter testing
dog page
front page of website
fish page
turtle page
filter by location on birds
bottom of front page
picture carousel second image
video viewing

Inspiration

The inspiration for this project was because all our team members had personally adopted pets from shelters, and wanted to encourage more people to adopt pets. Upon doing further research, we realized that in the year of 2023, more than 1.5 million shelter animals had already been euthanized. A Pawsitive match was created in order to decrease that number. By making shelter pets more accessible by unifying different shelters onto one platform, our website raises awareness for shelter pets and encourages more people to adopt shelter pets. Moreover, a huge issue within young adults and adults in the Silicon Valley community is mental health, especially depression, with over 20 percent of adults suffering from mental health issues. Since pets are scientifically proven to be able to alleviate loneliness and isolation, Pawsitive match was not only created to help shelter animals, but to help people find their companion in times of loneliness.

What it does

Pawsitive match allows users to sort by the type of animal that they are specifically looking for, and then sort the pets by location. Although the website currently only uses dummy data, our team plans on implementing the AdoptaPet API in order to provide the website with live data that would help the website serve its purpose. AdoptaPet API is an extensive API that has a complete collection of the pets available for adoption across the US from different shelters, and is updated regularly, which would make it the perfect choice for our website. Users on our website are able to read about different pets, view their photos and videos, as well as see their profiles on the shelter’s website and the shelter the pet is located in.

How we built it

We used html, css and javascript to program the frontend of the website, as well as using the bootstrap framework for elements such as the navigator bar and the carousel on the home page. Furthermore, when we connect the API to the website, we plan on using Python to make requests to the AdoptaPet API, using the ‘requests’ library in Python to send GET requests to the API’s endpoints. Then, we will include the authentication credentials of the AdoptaPet API in the parameters. Once we receive a response from the API, we will parse it to extract the relevant information using python parsing libraries. Finally, we can display the data on our website, and since we already have the framework and user interface of the website built, we would be able to put the data onto our website and allow users to interact with the live data.

Challenges we ran into

Some of the challenges we faced were difficulties with some html formatting, as well as facing difficulty at first with using the javascript to connect the dropdown menu to separate pages on the website. Moreover, the biggest issue was our lack of experience in backend programming and incorporating API’s, which meant that we ultimately did not have the ability to incorporate the API into our website and use live data.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Some of the accomplishments we are proud of is having a complete and responsive website, that is able to be filtered by location and pet type. Similarly, we were able to use the bootstrap framework to make a lot of the elements of the website easier to implement.

What we learned

We learned how to use javascript to make our website more responsive to the user, and to use css to correctly format our website to make it organized. Similarly, we learned how to use the bootstrap framework to implement elements such as navigator bar and image carousel, which added character to our website pages.

What's next for Pawsitive Match

The next steps for Pawsitive Match is implementing the AdoptAPet API, which would allow our website to use live data, and not merely use dummy data. Using live data would allow our website to fulfill its purpose, and allow users to view the shelter animals. Similarly, we would like to purchase a domain and publish our website, so that it is more widely available to people for use. Lastly, we would advertise our website on other websites or other advertising spaces in order to gain more users.