PlateMate

Recipe page with options and save button
Populated shopping list with one recipe

Inspiration

We believe that the process of finding new recipes, going shopping for food and finally cooking the meal is too tiring and difficult. Food is something that connects people and we want to share the experience exploring a new cuisine through cooking. So we created an app that streamlines the process of searching for recipes, grocery shopping, and cooking.

What it does

Our app has 3 tabs: Search, Recipes, and Shopping List. In Search, users can look at new recipes by specifying what they are looking for and view its description and ingredient list. In recipes, users can view their saved recipes. When users are ready to shop for their favorites new recipes, they can view a shopping list that contains ingredients for all of their favorite recipes so they can shop for them all at once. In the shopping list, users can remove certain items that they either already have at home or do not want to include in the recipe.

How we built it

We built it following a front-end and back-end approach. For the back-end, we leveraged using FastAPI and virtual machines to deploy our own API which returns recipes that we get from Edamam API. For the front-end, we used Swift and XCode to develop our app. This app consists of three separate views - a search for new recipes, saved/favorite recipes, and a shopping list to store all of the ingredients required. To save recipes, we wanted the app to save it locally so that when you close the app, the changes made will be reflected.

Challenges we ran into

Our group consist of hackathon beginners so we found it difficult to come up with an idea that was feasible to make. When we did come up with our idea, the problem became, what web framework should we use in the back-end and how should do we deploy it. Our app's biggest task was setting up the front-end because we had to display images, ingredients and be able to save our recipes. So the front-end was the hardest part especially with only one person in our group having experience with XCode.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we were able to deploy an API for the first time and were able to connect it with our front-end. We are proud that we never gave up and were able to make compromises with our app's functionality so that we are able to present a product.

What we learned

The most important we grasped was how to take our prior knowledge to apply it in creating an app for the first time. We familiarized ourselves with the difference in front-end and back-end and how they interact with each other. We got acquainted with new frameworks and languages like FastAPI and Xcode and used them to complete important functionality like retrieving and displaying new recipes. We learned how to assess how feasible certain features are and we learned to compromise features so that we can meet our deadlines.

What's next for PlateMate

We hope to add new features that we could not before due to the lack of time and skills. The features we want to include is an account system, displaying prices for items, and a location specification. We also hope to use web scraping to include directions on how to complete the recipes.