RoomBooker

Inspiration

Being a group of four computer science freshmen, we went into RamHacks with very few expectations but a lot of hope. However, we were approaching this hackathon with the goal of gaining new experience and learning as much as we could, whether it be actual coding or teamwork and communication skill-building. Our vision was to use our combined knowledge to create an effective and focused program that could actually be applied by a company.

What it does

Our Java-based program retrieves user attributes in addition to user preference for date and time range of booking to then output available room bookings. Moreover, our program allows the user to easily and quickly book a room or unreserve another room based on their priority level in the Federal Reserve of Richmond.

How I built it

Our team began by developing an algorithm and defining the contract of each of our six classes, which allowed us to then separate our program building between team members by classes. Although we were working individually on our unique classes, there was a lot of communication and overlap during testing phases and error processing. After we laid down our basic groundwork, we added more functionalities and focused on user accessibility until we finalized our product.

Challenges I ran into

Most of the challenges we ran into involved the scope of the project, time management, and our skillset. In terms of the project scope, we were hoping to develop both the parking space and room portions of the Federal Reserve of Richmond’s prompt, but we quickly realized that developed one very accurate and finished product was more achievable.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We are proud of the fact that using our combined skillsets, we created a working complex Java program following object-oriented principles that clearly resolved the issue described in the Federal Reserve problem.

What I learned

During RamHacks, our team significantly developed our object-oriented programming skills, specifically object encapsulation, in addition to learning more about date-time related coding.

What's next for RoomBooker

Potential further development to the RoomBooker program should include incorporation of all attributes of the Room class in a filtering system for users. The framework can also be adapted and expanded upon for other reservation systems, such as for parking spaces.

Built With

• java