Pool Party

Modal that sends an email to the selected student via an smtp server.
Responsive Bootstrap Layout
Filter by college and similar flight times. Submit an entry so others can see.
Home page

Inspiration

We were inspired by our friend Kenny. During fall break, he was looking to save money on an Uber to RDU, but he couldn’t find anyone to pool with even though he knew there were people traveling to the same place while trying to save money.

What it does

Our app lets users do two things. A user can filter the existing database to see if other users are trying to go from the same place around a similar time. After these entries are filtered, a user can send an email to someone they want to carpool with. This email is sent through gmail’s smtp server, using our own PoolParty gmail. If there are no users with a similar time, a user can add their own data so that others in the future can contact them.

How we built it

This full stack web application is built with MongoDB, Express, Node.js, and ReactJS. Bootstrap was used for styling purposes, and we send emails to our users via gmail's smtp server. We made good use of the MongoDB Atlas cloud platform.

Challenges we ran into

One big challenge was that two of our members had limited web development experience. Much of the first ten hours was spent on getting familiar with ReactJS, Node.js, and Express. Tldr: we learned basically the whole MERN stack.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As a team of three freshmen and first-time hackers, we are very proud of the project we built. We are proud that we were able to establish a working server and connect to a database on MongoDB Atlas. It was really cool seeing our friend Kenny's idea come to life.

What we learned

We learned a significant amount of web development during this hackathon since we did not know the majority of the technologies in the MERN stack. We also learned that five-hour energy contains 2000% of your daily value of vitamin B16.

What's next for Pool Party

In the future, we plan to implement a system for getting back from RDU as well. Also, we plan to use the Uber API so that Ubers can be called from within the app. We also want to add user authentication with JWT tokens so that users cannot spam our database. Another goal is to delete entries in the database once their flight time has passed. Finally. we plan to make the app nonexclusive to RDU, allowing users to find fellow carpoolers for any start and end point.