#80 Plate Pal

Inspiration:

Like many others, Rachel and Kathleen both struggle to use up ingredients in their household pantries before they spoil. In the midst of climate change, many people hope to find recipes that utilize ingredients that they have available. Thus, Plate Pal was invented: a way for home cooks to find recipes that transform limited quantities of food into tasty meals. Compared to other platforms, Plate Pal is unique in its ability for the user to search by the amount of ingredients they have. Plate Pal is a novel approach and an accessible tool that individuals can use to be sustainable and help decrease food waste at a household level.

What it does:

Plate Pal searches and compiles recipes while taking into account the limited ingredients available. Users enter the ingredient and quantity they have and also have the option to enter multiple ingredients. Plate Pal then scans recipes online from well-known recipe companies to find dishes that meet the user’s criteria. Users can preview the recipes and pick whichever one suits their needs and taste best.

How we built it:

We used the Recipe Search Edamam API link which scans the internet for recipes. Applying Javascript methods, we dynamically gathered recipes from the internet. We parsed through the data to provide only the necessary details like recipe title, default image, ingredients list, and link to the original site. It saves time and energy as home chefs no longer need to search extensively for working recipes before cooking.

Challenges we faced:

1. We came into this hackathon with little coding experience outside of the Java course taught in school. We spend a lot of time learning about web development and experimenting with frontend programming.
2. We worked as a pair which means that we had fewer resources and collaboration partners.

Accomplishments we are proud of:

1. We learned how to add javascript commands to change and manipulate visual components of a website
2. We learned how APIs work and how to apply them to our code
3. We were able to program a fully functional website

What we learned:

1. We both learned more about web development, a great deal of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
2. We learned how to design a website layout that is intuitive for most users
3. We learned how to implement an API and parse through data and user input

Future of the platform:

1. Expand access to more recipes and food company websites (Tasty.com, allrecipes.com, foodnetwork.com, etc)
2. Create a more robust search system that makes it clearer to the user how to search

Built With

• css
• html5
• javascript