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Schedulr
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login page
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calendar page
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friends page
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groups page
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group page
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group calendar + hover text
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database schema
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example python db class
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example python accessor methods
Website: schedulr.me if this doesn't work, use elasticbeanstalk in links
Usernames: [moyer, bob, doug, alex] Password: 1234
Inspiration
Every semester we have to set up a when2meet group for every single group project we're in at the time. Then, when we need to meet in the middle of the semester, we have to do it all over again!
On top of that, we never know which of our friends are free when we have an hour break for lunch.
Wouldn't it be great if we could share our schedules with friends make groups with our classmates so that everyone could see who was available, and never have to re-enter schedules?
What it does
Imports an iCal calendar file (.ics) from RIT's class scheduling system, or any standard calendar software. Events can also be added from the interface directly. Then you can add friends to your network, see who's free when you are, or create groups and compare schedules to find the best times to meet up or go out.
How we built it
The website was built using a combination of technologies we're familiar with, starting with a flask webframework on top of python 3. We used SQLAlchemy integrated into flask to connect to a MySQL database built on Amazon's AWS Servers. The frontend is built with HTML5.
Challenges we ran into
Probably the biggest challenge was integrating the website with the database. Both of us had prior DB experience, but it seemed prudent to use SQLAlchemy between the two for easy python integration. We didn't realize that we knew SQL way better than SQLAlchemy and it was honestly probably a bottleneck in development.
It turned out, however, that it made migrating the app to AWS incredibly simple. We needed to move the MySQL database off of our local computers (in case one of us left), and it took all of 5 minutes to do that with the "automatic" database building done by SQLAlchemy.
A final challenge we discovered was domain redirecting. We snagged a domain name from domain.com, but had trouble making it point to our aws site. We think part of it is slow update for DNS servers.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The actual schedule table looks pretty good, and we're happy with how well the hover functionality works. It's not perfect, and could be cleaned up, but we're not really graphic/UI/UX designers, and didn't want to mess with it too much. We might go back and take a closer look. We're mostly proud because we took an idea that we would actually use and got it all the way to a great working prototype. Alex is proud that he learned python for this.
What We learned
It's hard to learn a new technology in time to complete a hackathon, but we think we managed to pull it off. We also learned how important it is to segregate code to make multiple people working on it simpler. Mostly we learned that if we just throw our brains at a problem for a few hours, we can usually come up with a pretty good solution, and are trying to make time to do that in the future.
Also, get the domain name earlier.
What's next for Schedulr
Adding polish over the next few weeks/months and hopefully releasing it as a tool for at least RIT students to use to make meeting up earlier in the future, and if it works well enough others. We'd at least like to use it within friends though to keep continuous improvement and prove to ourselves that we can make a working, viable product.
email anm5465@rit.edu for technical issues
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