Student Connect

Inspiration

We, as a group of high school students, have always struggled with the daunting task of networking, and the professional world has always seemed a distance away. And so, in order to provide a solution, we have developed the concept and prototype for the Student connect website.

What it does

Student Connect is a website that allows students to connect with other students and professionals, in a simple and easily usable manner. It allows the user to easily look through other students' profiles and match with them based on shared interests, then setting them up to contact each other.

How we built it

We started off by creating a design layout on Figma, to create the idea for how we wanted it to look. We then went on to code the website and its pages in CSS and HTML. We then used JSON databases to store user information, and used JSP and Java for the backend algorithms (to match up users), and to access the database.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into the challenge of figuring out how we would connect with a database as well as run algorithms to process the data in Javascript, as none of us had experience doing so. To fix this, we used JSP, or Java Server Pages, to be able to code the backend algorithms and database connectivity in Java, which we at least knew better. This, in turn, created another challenge for us, which was finding a way to run these JSP files, since many free web hosting websites were incompatible. In the end, we decided to use Apache Tomcat to host the server locally.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of our completion of our Explore Page, as it was something we struggled with making initially. We are proud of it because it implements so many new coding languages and syntaxes which we had not used before, such as JSP and connecting to a JSON database, in order to achieve its function, along with the fact that the page has turned out relatively well.

What we learned

We learned a lot about how a website is hosted and how the backend and frontend of a website works. We learned a lot about coding in JSP specifically, and how we could use this code for the backend of a website to cause changes in the website's UI. In addition, we learned how to connect and read data from a JSON database, so that we could store user data persistently. Finally, and most importantly, we learned how to work together as a team, and how to divide the work so as to utilize each of our strengths.

What's next for Student Connect

In terms of future additions, we look to complete our prototype, and add more dynamic CSS, so as to allow for a clean user interface regardless of the information that's being displayed. We also look to add more features, such as a native messaging feature, as well as possibly a resources page for users to look into more about interests. Finally, we look to expand the login abilities and migrate the user information database to something more secure, like a cloud hosted database.

Built With

• apache-tomcat
• css
• html
• java
• javascript
• json-simple
• jsp