Inspiration
We always found ourselves looking for friends to play different sports with and with whom we can work on different projects. Additionally, during our time at university, we encountered many situations where we could have used a platform to borrow/rent a basic commodity which was an urgent requirement.
What it does
We at Rental Central provide a platform for everyone to extend their friendship and be connected through the various aspects of university life such as sports, clubbing, projects as well as to lend a helping hand and rent out the products that they do not require then. We at Rental Central are Always Connecting People.
How We built it
We mainly used React.js for our frontend, and Java Spring Boot 5 in our backend configured with gradle. We initially figured out what API endpoints we would want to support in our backend before starting to code, so that we could easily integrate both the frontend and backend after coding each simultaneously.
Challenges We ran into
Our first challenge was properly setting up springboot with gradle along with github so that more than one person at a time could simultaneously work on disjoint parts of the application. We also faced challenges while implementing inmemory versions of relational databases. Lastly, while testing the website, we realised that react hooks, especially useState was asynchronous and thus if we kept a Supplier function in the rendering part of React in place of the actual variable, it would fail to render immediately. This was a non-obvious bug that took us around an hour to debug, and was probably the most time-consuming elusive bug we faced.
Accomplishments that We're proud of
Hack&Roll2021 was the very first hackathon for all the four of our group members. Without much prior experience in web development especially Spring Boot, we managed to put a workable model for our website Rental Central incorporating key ideas such as UI design, system design and building scalable interfaces.
What We learned
We learned how to efficiently and effectively use React and MaterialUI and how to use them for the front-end web development. Additionally, we learned to use Spring Boot from scratch, and made extensive use of MaterialUI and React for the first time for all of us. We also learned about OAuth2.0 and implemented a simplified version in our own application.
What's next for RENTAL CENTRAL
We at Rental Central consistently work on expanding. We look forward to taking our website to a national level and maybe even a global level with time and added efforts. For the product renting part, we have already built a backend which will allow for a two-way handshake between the consumer and the lender. However, due to lack of time, we could not develop a suitable UI as of yet. In general, our UI and UX needs to be improved much more.
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